


a moment in time

by lentezon



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Horcrux Hunting, Minor Character Death, Not Canon Compliant - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Past Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Wizarding Wars (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:48:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 24,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29295438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lentezon/pseuds/lentezon
Summary: His lips are warm. Somehow she’s never thought about him as warm—perhaps it’s because his white hair and his grey eyes make him look cold, or because of his countenance toward her and her friends over the years—but he is, and it suddenly occurs to her that Malfoy is just as human as the rest of them. It’s obvious and at the same time it’s new. Even after coming to terms with him being in the Order, she’s still never seen him as anything but an acquaintance, someone to help fight on their side as a soldier in a war.But maybe, like herself, he isn’t a soldier at all.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 21
Kudos: 50





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There it is - I wrote another Dramione war fic. This is what lockdowns apparently do to me. I'm rather proud of this one and a little (a lot) nervous about posting it, so I really hope you, as a reader, enjoy this!

Nine months, seven days, six hours.

(Twenty-one minutes, if you want to be precise.)

Endings are hard.

You try to tie up every loose end, but you never can. And since it's the ending, it's all supposed to add up to something. It never really does. Things end, and often you don’t realise it until it’s too late.

Hermione Granger once heard somewhere that every person’s life is divided in three parts. The first ends with the loss of naiveté. She’s quite sure that she lost hers somewhere during her first year at Hogwarts, because she undoubtedly still had it when she arrived there, freshly introduced to the fact that magic really did exist and excited to learn every little bit she could. She’d have to learn it all to keep up with her classmates. She’d make new friends now that not everyone would think her weird for being so _different_ , even when she didn’t know what it was that made her so.

She lost it somewhere between Draco Malfoy’s first hateful words and the day she played a flute to lure a massive, three-headed dog to sleep. Magic wasn’t always beautiful, there were plenty of problems within the magical community that excluded others, and books and cleverness did not make for good companionship. There were more important things than that. Friendship, and bravery.

Up until she told him this, she’d always been a little jealous of Harry Potter. Not because he was famous—she wouldn’t have minded going through school relatively unnoticed like everybody else, herself—but because there was something effortless about the way he dealt with his classmates that she didn’t understand and could not emulate until then.

Harry, of course, died his first death when he was only a year old.

She can’t speak for others, except that all of them who have been in this war are far past their first life no matter how old they are. All the way from Mad-Eye Moody, who was possibly the least naïve and most paranoid person she has ever met, to Tonks and Remus’s toddler Teddy who lives with his grandmother in relative safety while his parents are off doing important Order work. She hasn’t seen either of them in months. They could be dead without any of them knowing it yet.

Someone puts a small cup in front of her on the table. It smells like coffee.

“You look like you need it,” Ron says.

“Thanks.”

Somehow, in the past year, Ron has managed to grow as a person. Everyone else became a more battered or broken version of themselves, yet he turned to a part of himself that was always there but never came out before—the part that is a copy of Molly Weasley.

He walks away and comes back a few moments later with his own mug, steaming, filled to the brim with tea. Ron’s never understood the concept of coffee. He says it tastes like dirt.

“I’d bake you some secret-recipe pastries, ‘Mione,” he says, “but we don’t have the supplies, and we both know how I am with baking.”

Hermione lets out a huff that passes for a laugh these days. They tried it once together, baking. This was in the early days, when she still had that heavy pain that comes with a loss and she was missing her parents, and baking made her feel closer to them because it was something they used to do together. It didn’t work out great.

They tried other things together, too, but it just ended up being weird for everyone, and mostly for themselves. That didn’t work out great, either.

“I’m just tired,” she says, by way of explanation. “I wish we were allowed some Dreamless Sleep Potion.” She takes a sip of the coffee. It does taste like dirt. That isn’t because she doesn’t like coffee, though, or because Ron doesn’t make it right—it’s simply shitty coffee. “This is probably not going to help, either.”

“It’s decaf,” he says.

“You think of everything.”

“If only we’d known that sooner.”

They’re quiet for a moment, a nice type of silence that is filled with the presence of the other. A lot of silence these days is too deep, too pressing. Hermione had never realised that there were so many types of silence until the war began, that it can invoke all types of emotion and hold all kind of things inside it, that it’s different when there’s other presences around you, and that nothing is ever really silent. Not even death.

“What do you think happens now?”

“The same thing. Until we’re all dead and everyone else is too scared to do anything.”

“Merlin, Hermione.”

She shrugs, and wonders when she became such a downer. Gradually, she assumes. “I miss him,” she says. “It’s not that I really think it would’ve made a difference.”

“I know,” says Ron. “Me, too.”

It isn’t that they’ve become immune to the pain of loss, even if it sometimes feels that way. They’ve lost too many people to remember. Way back on New Year’s they bravely attempted to toast on the people they lost that year, until the endless stream of names became too much and they all just knocked back their drinks with frowns on their faces and a longing for more burning liquid, be it Firewhisky or Muggle vodka or otherwise. Just half a year, but so many people.

Most of them were lost in the beginning, when they didn’t know what to expect just yet. Dumbledore. Charity Burbage, the old Muggle Studies professor. Rufus Scrimgeour. Justin Finch-Fletchley. People from the ministry that she didn’t know the names of before it was too late to learn them. Old classmates who disappeared without anyone knowing if they were dead or in hiding.

By now, everyone who was willing to fight was staying with the Order, or in some place the Order had helped facilitate and hide. It was still plenty of people. It was also by far not enough.

“What do you think happens if he wins?”

She closes her eyes. Shakes her head. “I don’t want to think about it. Honestly, I think I’ll probably be long dead before that.” She huffs, a laugh that isn’t anything like a laugh. “I think I’ll probably want to be.”

Ron looks away, because he gets it, but he also doesn’t _get it_.

“I see the two of you are trying to keep the spirits up again.”

Ron, his back to the door, rolls his eyes and does not reply—another sign of growth on his side. Hermione herself just says, “Good morning, Malfoy.”

“Granger.” He nods. “Weasel.”

She watches him as he makes himself tea and some crackers, which is as good a breakfast as they can get these days. It’s shit. They’re all used to it by now, but sometimes she still misses the big lunches that were so normal back at Hogwarts. She hasn’t had a pastry in forever.

“Couldn’t sleep?”

He huffs. “Please. It’s not my first raid.”

“Sorry,” she says. “I forget that ferrets are courageous creatures, too.”

He sneers. She smiles sweetly. He’s been here long enough that she’s no longer worried about them being unpleasant toward each other. She was so angry at him in the beginning for even daring to show up, and he was so angry at everything for having been put in the situation that he had to be pleasant to people he used to talk down to. But there’s been enough bloody noses now, months later. They don’t have the luxury to hate people who are on their own side.

“Let’s get some food,” Ron says, eyeing Malfoy’s meagre breakfast. “They’re going to be here soon enough.”

‘They’ are those people who act as leaders of the Order: Kingsley and Lupin and others who have been in the Order before and claim to know the best way to fight this war when in reality all they’ve been doing is fight small battles and win small wins and lose people. But that’s _all part of war, girl_. Get used to it.

“So,” an older Auror whose name she thinks is Halina—they haven’t met often—says in a tone rivalling Moody’s old growl, “everyone clear on what to do? Granger, what’s your task?”

“Go in first. Surround the house. I go to the back and wait for the sign to attack.” She hates that she still wants to answer every question right. It’s close to a year now since they left Hogwarts.

“Malfoy.”

“Wait and hide until they’re all distracted, then go in for a second wave.” He sounds bored. He always sounds bored, as if he doesn’t really care to be here but they make him come anyway, like attending meetings is nothing but a History of Magic lesson.

He’s an arse.

Malfoy looks at her and smirks, that same smirk that he used to have back in school but with just a tad less disgust on his face. It’s almost nice, this look, if only it weren’t on him.

She looks away.

“We don’t go today,” Lupin says softly. “We strike in the morning, when they will be least expecting us. I need you all to go to bed early and to be up at four. Any questions?”

_What’s the point?_ Hermione thinks. They’re not going to win the war with this. They may get some new information, or take out a Death Eater, but it’s not going to kill Voldemort. Only one thing is, and she and Ron are the only ones present that know about it—and they have no clue how to finish the job. They’re only halfway through and they have no idea how to go further, and everyone who did have a clue is _gone._

Halina dismisses the meeting without her even realizing it. It takes Ron’s arm around her waist to get her out of the kitchen and into the living room, and a miraculous cup of tea being pressed in her hand by someone Ron doesn’t acknowledge, for her to realize that the meeting is over at all.

“I’m sorry,” she says to no one in particular.

“Don’t be,” Ron says. He doesn’t elaborate on why not. “Don’t be.”

* * *

Twenty hours later her heart is beating faster than it has in weeks, her head is hurting from her pounding heart and the bright flashes around her, and she feels _alive_.

She ducks, and the spell that was meant for her hits the wall and shatters a few chips from the bricks. She doesn’t even look over her shoulder when she shoots one back. The response is nothing but a laugh. A miss, then.

Something has to be wrong with her because she _smiles_ as her breath hitches and she sprints for cover, but there is no time to think about it. All she can do is make sure she stays alive and that means she can’t think about things that aren’t the spells flying around or her friends that are caught in the fray with her. She notices Tonks, even now that her hair is a subtle shade of brown, but the Auror seems to be doing alright so Hermione doesn’t stop to help her. Instead she turns and shoots another Stunner at the person following her.

Whoever it is—she doesn’t recognize his face—is young still, too young to be in a fight like this. She knows because he still looks excited, happy almost to be fighting, to get a chance to prove himself against the Order of the Phoenix. She’d feel bad for him if he weren’t on the wrong side of this war.

_You don’t really want to do that_ , are the words that any hero in a Muggle movie would say now, but she can’t get the words to roll of her tongue. In her experience, those people really do want to do that, and even if they don’t those few words aren’t going to stop them. Merlin knows Dumbledore tried.

“Look,” he says, “the Golden Mudblood. Here to kill me, are you?”

She isn’t. He knows. “Yes,” she says.

He laughs.

She smiles.

Her Stunner is faster than whichever spell he throws her way, even if she has to drop to the ground to avoid it because there’s no time for a Shield Charm. It’s just as well because someone else, someone undoubtedly more experience chooses this moment to jump into the fight—and they’re not down and taken by surprise. She’s not proud to roll on the ground to avoid the spells coming her way. They leave tiny craters in the grass next to her.

“That’s right,” her attacker says, voice nothing but anger and disgust. “Down in the dirt where you belong, innit? _Crucio!_ ”

She’s just scrambling up when the curse hits her, and it knocks her right back down. Hermione’s been hit with this curse plenty of times and yet it never gets easier, never stops hurting like her veins are on fire on the inside and her muscles are all cramping up at the same time. She never manages not to scream, or shed a tear, or both at the same time—it’s impossible to stop it, impossible to even try—

When it stops, she’s panting, trying to catch all the breath that left her with her screams. Her brain screams at her that there’s no _time_ for that, to just get up and fight before it happens again, but her body refuses. Only for a few seconds, but it refuses.

In those few seconds, she should be dead.

She’s not.

Neither is the masked Death Eater, but he is distracted. It’s tough not to be when there’s blood spraying from cuts all over your body.

Malfoy is nowhere to be seen, but there’s no doubt about who saved her. _Sectumsempra_ became his signature, after all.

There’s no time to think about it, or to figure out where he’s gone. Her heart is still beating and even if it does so extremely heavily, like a brick punching her ribcage from the inside, she knows she can’t just leave until the flashes of spells flying through the air are gone and the air is no longer abuzz with magic. She scrambles up, takes one last, deep breath, and gets back to the front of the house without another look at the bleeding Death Eater.

She doesn’t have it in her to acknowledge the fact that he’s simply too weak and in pain to send any more curses her way, and that that means he’s dying.

She doesn’t have the guts to admit that she still can’t handle death, even now. She can’t handle the blood soaking into the earth to stay there forever. Death is part of life. Death is part of war.

War isn’t yet a part of her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you pick out references from my favourite tv shows?


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She half expects him to hand her a chocolate bar, except chocolate bars are a luxury they can’t afford these days. A shame. For someone whose parents aren’t very happy with sugary snacks, she does love chocolate.

Nine months, ten days, nine hours.

She must have slept through the night, which is such a rarity that it doesn’t even register as a possibility at first. It’s light out, so she must have fallen asleep early and woken up in the twilight. Except, she knows she didn’t go to sleep before nine in the evening—she never does. She goes to bed after dinner and reads _Hogwarts, a History_ until she can recite it by heart, or stares out the window without noticing the time, or cries without making a sound and without being sure what the exact reasons are for her tears because there are too many to pinpoint.

She doesn’t go to sleep early.

But she also doesn’t wake up late.

“It’s awake!” Fred Weasley says when she’s made herself presentable enough to make her way downstairs. “We were starting to think you were under some sleeping curse like that Muggle fairy tale. Dean told us about it. Muggles tell their kids the weirdest tales.”

“Yes,” she says without any inflection. “Witches and magic are indeed very far-fetched.”

“Nah,” says Fred, “but kissing a sleeping beauty and her not hexing you for it is.”

She smiles, and he winks, like they’re old lovers and he’s reminding her of an inside joke. They aren’t. She doesn’t think she could do anything with any of Ron’s brothers even if she wanted to, and Fred is regularly sleeping with Angelina now, anyway.

“Glad to see you up, Hermione.” Remus hands her a cup of tea that was probably meant for himself and promptly goes to make a new one for himself. “We were starting to get worried. You must have been exhausted.”

She half expects him to hand her a chocolate bar, except chocolate bars are a luxury they can’t afford these days. A shame. For someone whose parents aren’t very happy with sugary snacks, she does love chocolate.

Instead, there’s toast and jam, which is as good as it’s going to get.

“Anybody else around today?”

“Angelina’s at work. Ron’s at a posting. He’s not supposed to be back till late afternoon.”

Hermione doesn’t ask what spot he’s posted at, because it isn’t unlikely that Fred doesn’t even know. “Tonks?”

“At her mother’s,” Remus says. “It’s been a while since they saw each other.” You don’t wait too long seeing your family in these times. Any of you could die at any moment. Most of them don’t have family to visit at all, so whoever does is both envied and supported to make time for visits on a regular basis. “Malfoy is out on a supply run.”

She hadn’t asked, and she wonders if it’s obvious that she never does. Not likely—Ron would never ask for Malfoy’s whereabouts, either. Ron’s heart also wouldn’t skip a beat when hearing his name, though. “On his own?”

“With Lavender. They’re coming over here afterwards and then we’ll split the spoils evenly.”

Hermione nods. “Anything else that needs to be done today?”

“No,” says Fred. “You can entertain me. I haven’t had time to sit with George for ages, and we could still use some tips on how to improve our Ears for longer distances. Our standard spells aren’t working too well.”

She doesn’t feel like sitting around trying to get Extendable Ears to become less extendable and more transmittable, but she doesn’t have much else on her to do list, either. The bathroom could use a good cleaning, but she doesn’t feel like cleaning right now and she hates household spells. (That’s right, there’s a type of spell that Hermione Granger isn’t perfect at, and that she hates. Who would’ve thought?)

“Sure.”

They’re cross-legged on the ground brainstorming ideas on long-range eavesdropping techniques and other inventions that might be improved in use for their fights when Malfoy and Lavender pop in with two backpacks that have been heavily altered with Undetectable Extension Charms, in imitation of Hermione’s old bag. On the plus side, you can carry anything with it without anyone knowing. On the downside—well, you don’t _know_ what’s being carried in it.

“I think we already split it pretty evenly,” Lavender tells them happily, rummaging in the bag she’s now put on the ground and lifting a few things out of there with a flick of her wand. Energy bars. Cans of beans. Bananas. “We’re all having pancakes tonight,” she tells their stunned faces, because why not?

Fred shoots a look at Malfoy, who pretends to shrug grumpily. “What? It’s something different, at least.”

“It was your idea, wasn’t it?”

“Absolutely not—”

Lavender catches Hermione’s eye and winks. “Well, guess that’s my cue to leave.” It’s not; she still has to lift some packets of pasta from Malfoy’s backpack before hoisting hers back up and stepping into the yard. “Enjoy the pancakes.”

Is it sad that banana pancakes are the highlight of everyone’s month? That they lift spirits the way they do with the people in this house? It is, she thinks, even if she can’t deny that it fills her chest with something that reminds her of happier days. Hermione’s never been that crazy about food. It’s not that she doesn’t _like_ food, she just doesn’t _love_ it. But right now, the smell of banana is probably the closest she’s come to feeling love in a year.

* * *

Her first kiss with Ron went something like this:

(Five months, six days, twenty-one hours.)

They’re in the middle of nowhere, in the dark not-quite-silence of the Forest of Dean at night. It used to scare her, all those sounds that she didn’t recognize, until her parents had taken her camping a few more times and she’d started getting used to them. She still doesn’t know most of them, but she knows that they belong there. It’s familiar, nostalgic, even.

It hurts, because she hasn’t gone camping with her parents in years, and she might never get to do it again.

The air is cold, especially at night, but staying inside the tent is as miserable as sitting outside it. Harry has the locket today, which is only somewhat of a relief—Ron gets cranky when he wears it, more than any of them, and she hates having it around her neck. They all do. She doesn’t know if it’s because they know what it is and what it took to make it, but it _pulses_ evil. Now that she got to give it to Harry earlier today she wants to be as far away from it as she physically can.

Unfortunately, that’s not very far.

“May I join you?”

Company is both the last thing she wants right now and exactly what she might need at the same time, so she forces a smile and says, “Of course.”

Ron settles himself on the log next to her with an uncomfortable wiggle. “Honestly, ‘Mione, I don’t know how you do it.”

“Do what?”

He shrugs. “Keep so calm, I guess. And patient.”

She doesn’t _feel_ calm and patient. “I’ve had years of practice with you two.”

He laughs. It wasn’t really a joke. “It’s just… do you ever feel like we’re just completely lost out here? Like… it feels more like we’re hiding than saving the world, you know?”

“Yes,” she says.

“I guess I thought we’d have more of a plan.” He isn’t looking at her, which means he’s nervous; she’s known him long enough to understand that after all these years he still gets awkward when he has to talk to her about serious things. “I guess I thought…”

She knows what he’s trying to say. She doesn’t give him the respite of saying it for him.

“I miss my family,” he finally says.

“I know,” she says, because she does—she misses hers just as badly, after all, if not worse. At least Ron’s family remembers him. Harry and Ron tend to forget what she did to hers, just so she could be here with them. So she could at least try to fight against that what is wrong, for everybody like her who can’t leave and can’t really stay, either.

They sit like that for quite some time, in complete silence. There isn’t anything else to say, is there? She doesn’t have it in her to pity him, even if she hates herself a little bit for it. This isn’t anything like her at all.

(Isn’t it?)

She’ll blame it on the war, which has only been going on for three months but at the same time has been going on for years—since Malfoy got charged with murdering Dumbledore, since Umbridge tried to keep them from learning anything that could be used against Voldemort and his followers, since Voldemort rose again in that graveyard, since Harry’s name came out of the Goblet of Fire, since Pettigrew got away that night.

“I don’t have what you have,” Ron says.

“Excuse me?”

“This thing you have,” he says, like that should make everything clearer. “This… this _pragmatism,_ or whatever it is. It’s going to get you through this war, that is.” He still isn’t looking at her. “I don’t have it.”

“You’re not making sense.” For all that he mentioned her patience, she isn’t feeling it right now.

“You’re the only one of us that can keep it together. Yourself. The three of us.” He looks at her now, finally, with something in his eyes that she can’t quite figure out. “You’re not just book smart, you’re _smart_ , the way we need right now or we’re never going to get anything done.”

It sounds like he’s telling her to figure it all out, the way it’s always been, and she’s just about to heave a tired sigh and tell him to shut up when he says, “And I’m too dumb and scared to even tell you that I love you.”

She’s wanted to hear him say this since she was fifteen and asked to the Yule Ball by Viktor Krum, and now that he has, she has no idea what to do with it. What kind of timing is this? What is she supposed to do with this now, when she should be focused on finding Horcruxes? When there’s so much going on in her head that she doesn’t know if she has space for anything else?

“Hermione?”

“Yes.”

“Say something.”

She doesn’t say something. She leans in and kisses him, because if nothing else, she wants to know what it’s like. If it’s going to feel the way she always imagined it would, all soft and loving and tentative. Nothing like Krum, who was awkward—though perhaps that was because it was her first kiss—or Cormac, who was unpleasantly demanding.

And it is. Soft and tentative. It’s also a little awkward.

They break apart too soon and not soon enough, and Ron looks at her with big eyes that hold shock and surprise and perhaps a little bit of victory. She wonders if he’s thought about this as much as she has, because she feels a little victory, too.

It’s not until much later that she acknowledges victory isn’t worth much in the context of love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on [Tumblr](http://adammlligan.tumblr.com)! I'm not much of a HP blog but come say hi :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “And you think a history book is going to help you ace it.”  
> “If we can’t learn from history, then from what?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's! Fair warning for those who'd rather not read it: There's a flashback Ron/Hermione (not explicit) after the first break. You can skip it if you need to.

Nine months, twenty-four days, twenty-three and a half hours.

Being posted out on a surveillance mission sounds like a very exciting thing, but it isn’t. It’s staring at houses like a paparazzo waiting for some superstar to come out, except they’re not superstars and they never do come out of there, if they’re in there in the first place.

So you’re out there, hungry and often enough cold. Hermione doesn’t like to complain about things, she doesn’t like to act like a child who doesn’t do anything to earn her place here, so she doesn’t. But it’s boring.

Boring is better than battle, though. Boring doesn’t get you dead.

Invisibility cloaks don’t keep you warm as well as a good Muggle coat, and the late April weather in England isn’t pleasantly warm yet. Her toes are freezing. The bad thing about boredom and cold is that you almost want something to happen, just to break the rut. Then it does, and every fibre of your being is focused on staying alive for one more boring day.

Something moves around the door—a ripple in the air, nothing more. It’s something she’s been trained to see after all these months, something you don’t notice if you aren’t looking for it. If you don’t know what you’re looking _for._

Someone is hiding in this house. It’s not any of their safehouses—she wouldn’t be watching it if it were—but that doesn’t mean anything yet, except that these people are wizards. Everyone is careful nowadays. Just like in the first war. They need more to go on than a shimmer in the air.

She waits for it for another hour. She doesn’t get it.

Returning to Headquarters is both relieving and frustrating all at once. A relief to be done for the day. A point of frustration that telling the others about that little movement of air is somewhat of a victory, because it’s the first new thing anyone’s seen in weeks.

Nothing is as boring as being posted out there.

She isn’t usually at Headquarters in the evenings—they’re not supposed to stay at night if they don’t need to—except on days like these, when she’s been out all day and doesn’t feel like rushing out again immediately. It’s a way to catch up with those people she doesn’t share a safehouse with and doesn’t otherwise get to see, so it’s even kind of useful.

It was a surprise to find that she actually likes Theodore Nott as a person. He’s an asshole, but he’s a likeable one. One that can say unpleasant things and get away with no one hating him for it somehow. _Your friendly household Slytherin_ , in his own sardonic words.

It’s a slight jab against Malfoy, who is neither friendly nor a very good housemate and who has always ignored the comment in a little too obvious a way.

“Cigarette?”

“No.” She’s never smoked a cigarette in her life. Even though everyone seems to have taken it up during the last few months, she isn’t planning to do so. Her parents would be so disappointed, and now more than ever she can’t handle that.

“Smart,” Theo says, like it’s the first time he’s offered and the first time she’s declined. “I’ve heard these things kill you slowly.”

It’s not funny, and she doesn’t laugh.

“You could get your nose out of a book for once and join us as a person, you know. There’s no tests to study for or anything, you might’ve noticed.”

“There is the ultimate test to study for, you might have noticed,” she says absently. There is so much still to learn that might be used in the war, so many spells she’s never tried and theories she has never heard of before. Besides, she misses school. Learning that magic exists and how to use it was so incredible, she never understood how her classmates could be so casual about it, even those who didn’t grow up with magic. There is always _more_ that she hasn’t learned yet, always something new to read, and she misses it more than even she could ever have expected before.

“And you think a history book is going to help you ace it.”

“If we can’t learn from history, then from what?”

Theo shrugs, though she thinks he understands. That’s why she likes him.

Malfoy, however, isn’t as nice. “You ever consider doing something about that stick up your ass, Granger? A good lay would help, as I understand it.”

She doesn’t even look up from the pages. “Have _you_ ever considered not being an arse, Malfoy? A good lay would help, as I’m told, but then I suppose with that attitude you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone to share your bed with.”

Theo snorts, then collapses into a coughing fit because he still has the cigarette dangling from his lips. Hermione smiles; at least she’s made someone laugh today, which is a bigger feat than she accomplishes most of the time. Laughter—even ugly, snorting laughter—is a victory these days. It’s sure a lot better than staring in the void, which is what people do half the time while waiting around for something to happen. Especially at this time of day.

“Don’t you worry about my sexual prowess,” Malfoy says in that old cocky drawl of his. “I assure you I’m just fine.”

“I wouldn’t call it worrying,” she says, shrugging. “That’d be assuming I have the time or interest to think about your sex life, which, believe it or not—isn’t very high on my list of priorities. I’m just making observations, really.”

He flicks his cigarette to the ground and stalks inside. She only smiles and focuses on the book again. Reading until late at night makes her sleep a lot better than sex, in her experience.

Granted, her only experience is Ron, and that was too awkward, too _familiar_ , to be what either of them wanted, but she knows she doesn’t much care to try it again soon. It only serves to distract people, anyway. It doesn’t mean anything in these times.

“Tough day, huh,” Theo says. It isn’t a question.

“Long day.” She sighs. “Do you ever feel like we’re waiting for the war to happen to us?”

“Granger.” He raises his eyebrows. “It _is_ happening to us.”

“Yes, but… all we do is strategize.” It’s ironic hearing herself say these words when it was her who wanted to have everything planned out at the beginning of this war, until Ron and Harry decided that there was really no more to learn and there was always going to be things left up by chance. But that was then. She’s learned. She should have learned years ago, but now she’s seen a snake crawl out of Batilda Bagshot’s throat something has changed. Sometimes things simply shock you into changing.

“You want to be fighting all the time?”

Does she? “Maybe.”

Theo shakes his head and finishes his cigarette. “Go home, Granger.”

* * *

Six months, one hour.

They sleep together on New Year’s Eve, she and Ron. It’s _kind of_ a drunken thing, but one that’s a long time coming, so she doesn’t regret it. Hermione Granger loves Ron Weasley; it’s part of who they both are.

“I’ve never done this before,” she tells him, even though he has to know that because she wasn’t ready to sleep with Krum and would never have done it with Cormac.

“I know,” he says. “Me neither.”

She laughs, nervously, a high-pitched giggle that doesn’t sound like her at all. First-time nerves. There’s a weird feeling in her stomach that isn’t necessarily unpleasant, but makes her a little nauseous, nonetheless. Ron is grinning a little stupidly. Nerves, too.

She has the presence of mind to cast a silencing spell on her bedroom—a tip she heard from Lavender just a few days ago, when she was looking on in shock at how her old classmates acted around each other after only a few months. And now she’s doing exactly the same, like she didn’t turn up traumatized after months of being away only days ago.

She doesn’t feel like a traumatized girl right now. She feels _giddy_.

It’s not weird to take off her sweater in front of Ron; she gave up on modesty early on in their camping experience. It _is_ weird to have him look at her when she’s in her underwear, to stare at him in his boxers in return. She’s always tried to avoid staring at the boys too much; she’s always pretended that they did so, too.

“You’re gorgeous,” Ron says.

“Um, thanks.”

He smirks. She smiles. Both are equally awkward.

She hasn’t cared about her modesty around Ron for months, but she’s never taken off her bra in front of him, let alone in such a deliberate way. For the first time, she feels nervous about herself.

Ron just looks in awe, so she shouldn’t be too worried.

When they do move together, it’s clumsy and weird and she can’t deny that she feels strange about touching her best friend _there_. She wonders if she’s weirded out by the thing itself or by the person it belongs to. If sex is always going to be like that.

Afterwards, she smiles and agrees that it was good, but she thinks they both know it’s not going to happen again.

She doesn’t regret it. At least her first time was with a guy she loves.

* * *

Nine months, twenty-five days, two hours.

She lies thinking about it when she’s in bed—that very same bed she shared with Ron for a night. _A good lay would help_. She wonders about that sometimes if it would. If it’s _really_ that different from doing it yourself, if you do it the right way, with the right person. If she should go and try it sometime, like some of the others do.

But that isn’t her. There simply isn’t anyone that she cares enough for to try it with.

So she just lets her fingers wander. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s never killed anyone before. Not directly, anyway. Something inside of her is still holding her back, some part that isn’t yet broken and that refuses to do so.

Ten months, sixteen days, four hours.

For all that she yearns for a good fight, she hasn’t stopped feeling scared of them just beforehand. You don’t get used to the feeling before a battle. It’s terrifying. There’s excitement and fear battling for dominance inside your chest, making your hands tremble and your stomach upset. It doesn’t get easier. Every battle is different, after all, and the outcome is always one of two things—either you survive the next few hours, or you don’t.

She’s only nineteen. She’s too young to die. Better yet: she can’t leave the world like it is now. When she dies, she’ll do so in a safer world.

At least, that’s the plan.

She swallows heavily in a futile attempt to calm herself down. Crouching down for a long time is uncomfortable, and the long wait just makes her concentrate more on the thumping of her heart than her surroundings. How long has it been? Should she worry yet?

And then there’s a flash, bright and colourful against the night sky. Her breath stops for a moment as though in surprise, and then she’s up and running in the direction it came from. The back. Angelina.

And, by the looks of it, everyone else.

The thing about battles is they never go as planned, no matter how well you plan them. They aren’t anything you should plan in the first place—if you want to be sure of your survival, or your peace of mind, anyway. But you do, and you hope you’ll live to see through it, and that it’s worth something in the end.

More often than not, it isn’t.

She goes in with her wand at the ready anyway, trying to be sneaky and hurrying at the same time. Angelina seems to be doing fine, her braids whipping through the air as she turns this way and that to check who’s in need of a little help, wand flashing.

Dean is in more trouble, so Hermione rushes there as quietly as she can so she can pop up in surprise and help him out. He barely looks up when she fires a Shield Charm just in time. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” Shield Charms don’t last longer than to block the first jinx or curse that hits them. Fred and George are trying to come up with something more lasting, but so far nothing has worked yet, so the next curse comes flying at them right away. It’s Dolohov, someone she has a particularly bad history with since the battle at the Ministry three years ago. Her chest _still_ hurts just thinking about it.

He’s a good fighter, a fast dueller, but there are two of them. At least they’re on somewhat equal ground.

She parries another curse, leaving Dean room to fire one of his own. Dean’s a good duellist; like Hermione and most other Muggleborns, he loses some time on getting his wand movements right, but his reflexes are quick enough to make up for that.

Dolohov is faster.

“I hoped we’d face each other again,” he says to Hermione, in a tone as though they’re having a calm conversation in a pub somewhere. “I always regretted not being able to finish what I started last time. Did you like my curse?”

She clenches her jaw and shoots another jinx his way. He deflects it easily.

“I invented it myself, you know. I based it on that backwards way Muggles have of killing each other, the silver things they slash each other with—”

It’s a shame that the first spell that hits him isn’t anything more than a Silencing Charm, but at least he’s _quiet_. Enraged, too, by the way he makes a slashing motion with his wand and a familiar purple jet of light comes out—

“Protego!”

They’ve learned to duel non-verbally, but both she and Neville speak the spell out loud in a panic. A rookie mistake. She ducks to avoid a jinx coming at her from the right that there’s no time to deflect anymore. It’s like they’re surrounded all of a sudden, even if they weren’t unnoticeable before with all the spells flying around, but their panicked voices pulled in Death Eaters like hungry hyenas. It’s not a separate duel anymore, it’s a chaotic battle now, and despite the sky becoming lighter she can’t make out anyone anymore. There isn’t time. It’s all she can do not to get killed now.

They all disappear from the spot.

“What happened?”

“It turned on us too fast.” She doesn’t say that it did so after her own panicked scream. It may have been part of it, but such a thing doesn’t turn battles around. “I think they got reinforcements.”

She’s heard that from Tonks, actually, who saw them appear out of nowhere. It would explain how it could happen that so many people turned on them at the same time, when their own people couldn’t have fallen all at the same time just like that. It was Tonks who gave the sign to retreat, too.

Mad-Eye doesn’t look happy, but he manages to keep his comments to himself, which is rare but appreciated. The sorry bunch in front of him doesn’t need a chewing out. “Anything new? Wins?” Halina always wants to hear about the wins first, before caring about the losses. That’s other people’s worry. Hannah and Adel’s, mainly.

“Dolohov’s dead,” Malfoy says calmly.

Mad-Eye raises his eyebrows, which tends to mean that he’s impressed. He doesn’t ask, and Malfoy doesn’t elaborate. What follows is an uncomfortable silence that only lasts seconds but makes Hermione want to crawl into bed to hide.

She’s almost disappointed that Dolohov’s dead. She almost wanted to be the one to do it.

Could you have?

She’s never killed anyone before. Not directly, anyway. Something inside of her is still holding her back, some part that isn’t yet broken and that refuses to do so.

Times like now, she isn’t sure whether she’s happy about that.

“Anything else?” asks Halina.

“Angelina’s hurt,” Neville says. “But Hannah says she’ll be okay again. It will take a few days.”

“Noted.” He seems disappointed. Hermione thinks he probably is. They shouldn’t have retreated when everyone was still in fighting shape.

Well, then they should’ve sent more people, or more experienced people, rather than letting her generation be blown to pieces. There’s still too much life left in them.

“Dismissed, then.”

Her eyes cross Malfoy’s, who tries to look unimpressed but holds a spark in his eyes that look unpleasantly like disappointment. She wonders if he’d been hoping for a compliment of sorts, because it has to be him that did it. She can’t be sure, because Malfoy never says more than he needs to. Neither does Halina, though, so hoping for a compliment from her is like waiting for Voldemort to keel over and die all on his own: highly improbable.

“How did you kill him?”

“What?”

“Dolohov. How did you kill him?”

“What makes you think that was me, Granger?”

She shrugs. “You.”

He looks at her for a long moment. “What does it matter?”

She has no answer to that. Why _does_ she care? He’s gone. He won’t be hurting anyone again, and she won’t ever have to see him again, or hear him taunt her. How he met his end doesn’t change anything.

“His own curse,” Malfoy says, looking a little curiously at the way Hermione holds her hand against her ribs without even realising it herself. “He was rather proud of his invention. Thought he might want to feel it himself.”

It does not make her feel better, knowing how Dolohov died. She didn’t really think it would; it’s never made any difference before. She doesn’t know why this disappoints her, but it does.

“It’s never going to make a difference,” he tells her. “Don’t break your bushy head over it.”

“You could try saying that without insulting me.” Even she can hear how tired her own voice sounds.

“Wouldn’t want things to change too drastically now, would we?”

Somehow, this makes her smile. She turns away a little, as if to hide it, although she knows he must have seen her lips turn up a little.

He doesn’t mention it.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These aren't very long chapters and I'm an impatient pos so here's another one :)

Ten months, seven days, nineteen hours.

“What I don’t get,” she says, staring at the cigarette between her fingers, “is why you hated me so much. More than any of the others, I mean.” She hasn’t flicked the cigarette for so long that the ashy part is almost ready to crash to the ground by itself. It’s the first one she’s ever attempted to smoke, and she’s only taken one drag. It was enough of a challenge not to start coughing, and she isn’t keen on trying another one.

“Because you’re a swot,” he says.

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.” He throws his own smoke to the ground and crushes it with the tip of his shoe, in that delicate way only he and Theo can manage. “If you aren’t going to smoke that, Granger, I’d appreciate it if you don’t come to me for another one next time.”

She brings the stick to her lips and sucks demonstratively. And coughs.

And coughs.

Merlin, cigarettes are as bad as they look and smell. She should’ve known. She’s been warned, dammit, often enough, and isn’t she usually one to listen? So why would she still be so stubborn—

“Bloody Hell, Granger, if I’d known you were going to off yourself with it, I wouldn’t have offered.” He flicks his wand, in a lazy kind of way that clears her airways right away but still leaves her a little out of breath and with tears in her eyes. “I would’ve thought you’d read all about these sticks before trying one.”

“Shut up, Malfoy.”

He smirks, and shrugs, and lights another one for himself. “If you’d been told all your life that Muggles were idiots, and you were better than them, would you believe it?”

“I…”

“And if then someone descended from those idiots, without any magical blood in their ancestry or magical knowledge before Hogwarts, stood you up in every single subject available, would you hate yourself for that? Or her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Of course you don’t. You weren’t taught that you were better than any of us—you just were.”

“That’s just… books.”

“Please,” he scoffs. “I think we can all agree that Potter and Weasel wouldn’t even have survived first year without you, and there wouldn’t even be a war. Just him.”

Draco Malfoy doesn’t talk about himself, or Voldemort, or anything in between. He’s talked about what he’s been through with Kingsley and Remus only, and only because they made him. “What—what was it like?”

He smiles, and it looks almost like a real one. “Nice try, Granger.”

She can’t say she doesn’t feel a little disappointed, but she forces a smile anyway. “Worth a shot.”

“Just don’t sell yourself short like that,” he says, which is probably the nicest thing he’s ever said to her, if not any Gryffindor at all. “I bloody hated you because you’re brilliant, Granger. I suppose that should count for something.”

“Thanks, Malfoy,” she says, blinking in surprise.

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t get used to it.”

* * *

She wakes up the next morning with a headache that could be a hangover had it not been for the fact she didn’t drink even a drop of wine last night. It’s the kind of headache that belongs to an intense day or evening, the kind that leaves your sleep uneasy because there’s too much going on in your head. Too much for your brain to process.

Of course, these days, she gets that kind of headache rather often. Even days when not much happens are a lot to process.

Days when any fighting happens are the worst. After so many months of it, she still hasn’t found a way to sleep through the night on such days, because all she keeps seeing are flashes of light and the faces of anyone who they might have lost or who got injured.

Last night was not one of those nights. It was a regular kind of day, one which involved a lot of coffee and books and some conversation. It’s the last part that’s the problem. She’s been thinking over Malfoy’s words for half the night, and she hates herself a little for it. It’s been such a long time since anything he said bothered her so much that she couldn’t let it go. She’d promised herself he would never hold that power over her again, and yet here she is.

“Don’t you look bright and awake,” Tonks says when she gets downstairs.

“We can’t all make ourselves look like we are.”

“Ahh, if only.”

This has become something of a running joke, even though it isn’t funny at all—that Tonks can change her appearance at will, but she can’t make herself look less tired, or sick, or anything of the sort if she’s feeling it. She can change herself enough to look like Kingsley, but she can’t get rid of the bags under her eyes.

Of course, everyone has those now, so it doesn’t matter much. It would only look out of place if she didn’t.

“How was your posting?”

“Boring as usual.” Only Tonks can make this sound like she doesn’t mind. “But it keeps you busy.”

As much as Hermione wants—has tried—to get behind this line of thought, she’s never managed to consider standing watch somewhere as _busy_. Perhaps the very first time, when she was still hopeful it would lead to anything, like when she was planning to infiltrate the Ministry with Harry and Ron and they’d stand outside it all day to help them plan. This isn’t anything like that. There is no planning. There’s just surviving.

“Something is going to happen soon,” Tonks says. “It’s in the air. I can feel it.”

“That’s just autumn,” Hermione says with a small smile. “I’m getting coffee. Can I get you anything?”

“No, no. It’s time I went to bed. I’m far too optimistic when I’m tired.”

“You’re always optimistic.”

“Exactly.”

“Sleep well, Tonks.”

“Cheers,” Tonks says with a salute.

Hermione smiles after her and settles at the kitchen table. Tonks is like a breath of fresh air even in these times, even when she isn’t entirely her old self either. It must be tough on her, too.

Then again, she’s gotten a lot better since Remus got over his issues and is now sleeping in her room on a regular basis.

It must be nice to wake up next to someone on a regular basis. It was nice when she got to sleep near Harry and Ron on the worst nice, and that was as friends—and perhaps with the thought that it might be more with Ron, that nervous excitement that she felt just leaving her hand hanging over the sofa and him touching it from where he was lying on the floor.

She misses that feeling. Not with Ron—that Phoenix has burned—but with _someone_. It’s not in her interest to sleep with just anyone, just to get through a night. Not that she blames anyone who does. She knows plenty of people do it, and not just people she knows from school.

You’d think Aurors would be more subtle about it, but really, no one is. And she does blame them a little for _that_. She does not want to get into her reasons behind that, because then she’d have to admit that she feels lonely, among all these people that she counts as her friends.

Then she’d have to admit that she thinks about such things, when she pretends she’s simply not interested at all.

The coffee is almost cold when she finally remembers to drink it. It tastes even more terrible this way, but you learn not to be wasteful with anything when every supply run is another risk. Besides, she clearly needs the caffeine. It’s all she has to get her through the days properly, what with the few hours of sleep she gets every night.

You’re brilliant, Granger.

She’s never been so grateful for someone to come down the stairs to break her away from her thoughts. She’s also never been so grateful for that person to be Angelina and not Ron. Or worse, Malfoy.

“Morning, Hermione,” says Angelina, who’s no longer surprised to see Hermione up far before the crack of dawn after months of living in the same house.

“Morning,” Hermione says, brighter than she feels. Angelina is one of the few people who actually still has a job, and she doesn’t stay in this house all the time, just to make sure any checks on her will come back clean. She has a cheap apartment outside London where she goes on a regular basis. It’s the address known to her work, and to the Ministry.

But she stays at the safehouse often, not in the least for the social contacts. It’s lonely when you’re surrounded by people you can’t talk to safely.

They eat toast in silence, because neither of them is much of a morning person and neither of them has much news to tell that they want the other to know. At least at Hogwarts, things _happened_ , even if it wasn’t always good things.

You’d think war would be like that, but war is a limbo, where everyone is just waiting for something to happen and at the same time wants nothing to happen at all, because it can’t be anything but bad. It brings out the worst in people— _all_ people, not just Death Eaters and their sympathisers.

She looks up when she hears more footsteps on the stairs. Malfoy doesn’t greet either of them, but that isn’t anything new. He goes around the house like he’s not even there, or at least like he really doesn’t want to be there, until either he’s supposed to do go out on a job or it’s evening and he finally wakes up enough to speak a few words. Usually, those words aren’t constructive.

Then again, neither are hers when he is around.

War is a Purgatory. All the bad things are here.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You’d think that after nine months of this, she’d have learned. After four months of having to look around every corner, every tree, while on the move

Day Zero.

She’s waiting outside Snape’s office, per Harry’s directions. She’s not too happy about it. _You’ve got to watch Malfoy and you’ve got to watch Snape, too. He won’t be expecting you lot to be on the watch._ As though their teachers haven’t paid a lick of attention these past years to know they’re always pretending to be better protection than actual protective measures put in place by experienced professors.

And yet she can’t _not_ do it. Because as much as she hates to admit it, Harry’s often—though not always—been right, and she isn’t about to risk this.

Luna was happy enough to join her, at least, so she doesn’t have to hang out here by herself. After six years, this still makes her nervous, and she wouldn’t want to be here alone right now.

Frankly, she just wishes she could have been at those lessons learning all this new knowledge about Voldemort first-hand, too, rather than hearing the summarized version from Harry afterward. There could be something that he doesn’t notice that they would if there were three of them, something that could change everything.

Or perhaps she’s just a little jealous, because it sounds fascinating. They’re Dumbledore’s memories. He’s seen them a great many times before, looked at every little detail so many times it’s highly unlikely he’s missed anything.

They, on the other hand, must have missed something, because it’s Professor Flitwick who attends them to the fact that something big is going on in the castle—by sprinting by into Snape’s office while yelling something about Death Eaters.

“Luna,” Hermione says breathlessly, more out of shock than for anything to say.

“Yes,” Luna says, eyes wide.

“You two.” It’s Snape, looking like a giant bat coming out of his cave. “Stop dawdling in the hall and look after Professor Flitwick.”

“Wha—”

“Your Professor has collapsed,” Snape snaps, “and I must help fight the Death Eaters.”

Looking back, the whole exchange can’t have taken more than a few seconds. It certainly won’t feel any longer than that. It goes too fast to realise anything is off—Snape is their teacher, and their first instinct is to listen to him, even if they came here to keep an eye on him.

Besides, something is wrong with Professor Flitwick.

He’s unconscious on the floor, and even Hermione can say right away that something about it is off. It’s Luna who says it out loud. “He didn’t collapse,” she says. “He’s been Stunned.”

They look up at each other at the same time, that type of realisation that comes crashing in like a tsunami. The realisation that they’ve made a terrible mistake in not going after Snape as he ran. She doesn’t know if she wants to do it now, too scared of what she might find in his wake, the cost of their worry for Professor Flitwick.

“I can take care of him,” Luna says, nodding at her Head of House. “If you want to go check on the others.”

“We should go together,” she says, almost as a plea.

“That’s quite alright.” Luna has that pleasant tone in her voice whenever she speaks that makes it difficult to go against her suggestions. “We’ll catch up.”

Hermione gets up and leaves the room, too slowly for the urgency this situation calls for. Heart pounding, palms sweating, and feeling a little sick. _Death Eaters. In the castle._ And Dumbledore’s not here. Anything could happen now. She silently apologises to Harry for doubting him.

It’s chaos in the hallways, and then there’s no more time to feel guilty, or to think about anything at all. The last time she saw this many Death Eaters in one place, they left a camping site a battleground. And it’s not looking much better now. There are Death Eaters and Order members and people who were in the DA last year who must have responded to their coins burning. They fight a single Death Eater in twos or threes, doing the best they can but clearly having trouble.

She does the only thing she can do at that moment.

She dives into the fray.

Like last year at the Ministry, duelling is chaotic. It’s the flashes of the spells that fly around, the debris that they leave when they hit walls, but far more than that, the chaos in her head that is trying to find the right spell and the right aim and the right opponent, all at the same time. Every spell that leaves her wand leaves with the hope that it please doesn’t hit the wrong people. Every Death Eater she aims her wand at reminds her that her friends are at risk.

“Hermione!” someone yells, and she ducks on instinct—to find a spell flying right over her, followed by the _thunk_ of a body hitting a wall. She hopes it’s not a student. She’s scared to look around.

There’s more of them but they’re by no means a match for the Death Eaters. They need more teachers, more experienced witches and wizards on their side—

But there are. She realises that when she looks up to see Professor McGonagall, and Remus, who isn’t supposed to be here. They got reinforcements.

Surely they’ll be alright now.

* * *

Ten months, twenty-six days, three hours.

She’s _almost_ used to seeing Death Eaters now, though their masks and hooded robes still incite fear. She’s sure they don’t wear it anymore to stay anonymous, but only to make sure people stay afraid. It’s working. Even for her, even for many Order members, it’s still working.

And like in the very beginning, she and her friends from the DA are still no match for them.

It’s her and Ron this time, and at least that’s familiar. They know each other well enough to play into each other’s strengths and weaknesses—she knows more curses to use and can cast them stronger, but after growing up around magic his whole life, he’s faster, more practiced than she is. More natural. She trusts him to throw Shield Charms before she can, and he trusts her to throw all that she has into this fight to end it.

To end the Death Eater.

Ron’s done it. He’s killed someone—with a full-on Killing Curse, no less.

He threw up instantly after. She remembers that, almost better than the act itself.

As for her, she just throws another Stunner, and a Full Body-Bind, and—

Silencio.

It’s not close to enough to beat an opponent, but it’s the first spell that actually hits, and it’s been known to save her life before. But Silencing Spells aren’t going to win them the war, and they both know it.

“ _’Mione,_ ” Ron says urgently.

“ _Yes_ ,” she hisses, not entirely in a different tone.

He deflects another curse, but she can hear him breathing hard. He’s getting tired. It’s not clear from the way he fights, but she knows him better than anyone. She has to do something fast before he lets a curse slip through.

“Are the children getting tired?” the woman croons. It’s not Bellatrix, but her taunting sounds an awful lot like her. “Are the children trying to play at adult war games? They’re not supposed to be here. They might…” She fires a curse that both Hermione and Ron deflect at the same time, because the green flash that follows it is obvious. “…die.”

“Screw you,” Hermione says, forcing a Conjunctivitis Curse out of her wand. She doesn’t realise it’s hit until the Death Eater lets out an angry yelp and starts shooting curses in their general direction. They have to dive apart to get out of their path of destruction.

“Bloody Hell, Hermione,” Ron snaps, “ _finish her._ ”

But she can’t. _She can’t_. She has her wand aimed at the angry Death Eater but nothing is coming out, not even so much as a Stunner, and they’re going to die and it’s her fault—

A curse does hit her. It doesn’t kill her, but it _hurts._

Ron’s curses are always more powerful when he sees a friend hurt. His Cutting Curse is bad enough that it knocks the Death Eater off her feet and her hand out of her hand.

“Come on,” Ron rays. He looks pained. He doesn’t wait for her to respond; he just grabs her hand and Disapparates them both from the scene. The stinging pain that shoots through her chest from her shoulder hurts even more than the initial curse. It takes everything she has not to pass out on the porch.

“Bloody hell, Weasley, what happened?”

“Freeze,” Ron says tightly. “Get Poppy.”

“Yeah.”

The fading footsteps are the last thing she hears before she passes out.

When she comes to, it’s to sheets around her bed, in the attic that they use as a sick ward. It’s not her own safehouse. They have it set up in their Headquarters because it’s the only place close enough. Mad-Eye wanted it in a place near plenty of Order Members so that they could fight off any attackers that might come for the sick and injured, because sick and injured opponents are easy to get rid of, and they have to be vigilant.

Always vigilant.

You’d think that after nine months of this, she’d have learned. After four months of having to look around every corner, every tree, while on the move. She’s grown into this war and still she freezes when it comes to it. Everyone else has upgraded from jinxes to curses, has learned to hurt the enemy before they hurt them, and here she is. Brightest witch of her age, and the fucking weakest.

She’s learned nothing from that first fight at the Astronomy Tower up until now. She’s still the scared teenage girl that she was over a year ago, when all she could do was shoot Stunners for fear she’d hurt a friend. Duelling is nothing like they practiced in the DA. She remembers praising Harry for all that he’d done and him protesting that it was mostly pure luck, and admits quietly to herself once again that he was right. Nothing could have prepared them for this. Not even the best of them.

A battle doesn’t make a soldier. It just makes a scared person with a weapon, trying to be what the war needs them to be.

“Hey.” It’s Ron—of course it’s Ron. “Can I come around?”

“Yes, of course.” He’s already seen all of her. She can handle him seeing her in her pyjamas.

He’s holding a cup of tea, which he hands over to her right away. “You look terrible.”

“Thanks,” she says, and takes a sip.

“What happened?”

“Freeze,” she repeats what he told Malfoy when they got to the safehouse. She doesn’t manage to keep the bitterness out of her voice quite as well as she’d like. She doesn’t think she can keep it off her face, either, so she just takes another sip to try to hide it.

“It happens to all of us,” Ron says. It’s nice of him to say, but it’s a lie. Yes, it’s happened to people a few times, but not if they’ve been through as many battles and situations as she has. If she’d frozen this way in Godric’s Hollow, she’d be dead. She’s lucky that she isn’t yet.

“It doesn’t,” she says. “I don’t know—I don’t know why it happens. Or what to do.” She hates how desperate those words are. She hates that that’s exactly the way she feels. “How do you do it?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I just do.”

_Just do_. Like at the Ministry, or at Godric’s Hollow, or when they ran into those Death Eaters in London after the wedding. Don’t think, just do. Turn off your brain, turn on your magic, like a good soldier.

But what if you’re not?

“I don’t know if I could kill one of them,” she says quietly, like an admission. “Not so deliberately.”

It leaves Ron silent for a few heartbeats. He doesn’t look at her, just at his hands, in that nervous kind of way people have when they’re about to say something they’ve never said before. “But why does it matter?” He looks up at her briefly and then back at his hands, taking a deep breath. “It’s… It’s terrible. I don’t know if it’s because I used _that_ curse, or just because it was the first time I ever did something like that, but it was like killing a part of _me_.”

Ron’s never talked about that day, not even with her. She doesn’t say anything. There might be something more he wants to say that he won’t if she interrupts him.

“I have nightmares about it,” he says. “It’s by far the kindest way to kill anyone and it’s still horrible, and I still dream mostly about that bloody curse.” Finally, he looks up at her, and it’s the first time she sees him tear up that isn’t after someone’s died. “I wish I’d never used that curse.”

“It saved our friends.”

“I could have used another one.” He huffs, in a mockery of a laugh. “Any other one. I’m glad that I’ve saved people. I try to think about that part. That it was worth it.”

“It was,” she says.

“It was,” he agrees, “but the cost—You can’t take that back, Hermione. Once you’ve paid it, it’s gone.” He smiles at her, but it shows only pain. “Don’t feel bad about not paying that. Just… pick something you’re alright with paying.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Ron/Hermione friendship is really important to me - there's too much love there to ignore. I hope I'm getting them right.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snatchers are the kind of people without morals who will grab any opportunity to earn money over the backs of others.

Eleven months, six days, twelve hours.

Snatchers are the worst.

They don’t fight—or encounter—Death Eaters often outside of battles. Death Eaters don’t go about trying to find Order members on a whim. They have better things to do than lurk in the shadows and wait, or at least Hermione assumes they do. Malfoy never talks about living at their Headquarters, and he’s the only one who could know.

Death Eaters don’t lurk around in the shadows hoping to find Muggleborns and blood traitors, because that’s what they have Snatchers for. They have the funds to actually pay people to do the dirty jobs. Worse even, they have people who are completely fine snatching innocent people up and selling them to actual Death Eaters.

Snatchers are the kind of people without morals who will grab any opportunity to earn money over the backs of others.

And they’re always around. Over a year into the war and they haven’t given up yet—though there are decidedly less of them now. Their possible presence still has to be taken into account on every single supply run.

It’s her turn today.

She’s only seen Snatchers once, and only because Dean pointed them out to her that time, but she knows what to look for now. They’re all different, but they have a way of acting that you don’t see with Muggles.

Besides, when in doubt about anyone, assume they’re not your friends.

“I think those are Snatchers,” she whispers.

“Yeah,” Malfoy whispers back. “That’s Scabior right there.”

She doesn’t know who Scabior is, but at least it confirms her suspicions. It means they can’t go to the shop they were planning on, though. It’s not worth the risk, not for this. “Any other shops around here that we know of?”

“Next town over,” he says. “These places don’t have a lot of options.”

Brown hair looks strange on him. It’s supposed to be so blonde it’s almost white; that’s his signature look. Brown makes him look more… plain, the same way that his matching brown eyes to. He’s still undoubtedly Malfoy, and yet he’s not.

Which is the point, of course. He’s too recognisable looking like himself.

“We’re not taking the risk,” she says.

“You’re still boring, Granger.”

“No,” she says. “I’d just like to survive this war.”

He smirks, but agrees with her anyway. They put themselves in enough dangerous situations. This one can be avoided without it costing anything except a little extra time. The only problem is they’ll have to walk far enough away that the sound of their Disapparating won’t let the Snatchers know they were here in the first place.

They can’t walk underneath one old invisibility cloak with the two of them, so they’ll have to do it subtly. It’s hard to act normal when you’re trying everything not to be spotted and every single step seems to be something you wouldn’t normally take, even if not a single Muggle looks up at them strange.

“Don’t get too nervous,” Malfoy mutters, “but I think they were looking at us.”

“We didn’t do anything suspicious,” she says nervously.

“I don’t think they recognised us. Act normal.”

What’s normal? How do you act normal when every single step you take is one you think through far too much? She can feel her palms starting to sweat. Trying to stay hidden is much worse than an open fight. They’re both terrifying, but at least in a fight you know what to expect.

Someone’s walking up in their direction ahead of them. It’s probably just another Muggle, but she can feel her heart speed up, because what if—

“Play along,” Malfoy says in an urgent tone.

“What?”

But he doesn’t answer. He doesn’t explain. He does something that she has never, not once in her life, considered would happen to her.

He grabs her face on both sides and presses his lips against hers, gently turning her and pressing her into the wall next to them.

Her first instinct is to struggle, but she forces herself to stay still, to use her raised hands not to push him away but lay them on his sides so she doesn’t look too surprised to outsiders. _Play along_. It’s highly unlikely that he does this without good reason.

His lips are warm. Somehow she’s never thought about him as _warm_ —perhaps it’s because his white hair and his grey eyes make him look cold, or because of his countenance toward her and her friends over the years—but he is, and it suddenly occurs to her that Malfoy is just as human as the rest of them. It’s obvious and at the same time it’s _new_. Even after coming to terms with him being in the Order, she’s still never seen him as anything but an acquaintance, someone to help fight on their side as a soldier in a war.

But maybe he isn’t a soldier at all, either.

It takes too long.

It’s over too soon.

“He’s passed,” he says, letting go of her and looking in the direction they came from. “Sorry, I…”

He doesn’t seem to be able to come up with a good excuse, because he trails off there.

“Diversion tactic,” she says, hating that she sounds a little breathless. “Smart. Let’s go.”

It’s even harder not to break out in a run now than it was before. She wants nothing more than to get out of here—get away from the Snatchers, finish their job, and hide in her room with a book so she can process this. Before she can do that, though, they have a job to do.

“Meet you at the usual spot,” Malfoy says when they get to an alleyway with no one around. He disappears before she can agree, so she does the only thing she can do. She follows him.

Before everything they do, be it a supply run or a battle, they agree on Apparition points. They can’t get all their supplies at the same shop or it will look suspicious, they have to get through several towns to visit several different ones.

Malfoy is waiting for her, leaning against a wall with his arms crossed. “Don’t see anyone here that I shouldn’t see,” he says without looking at her. “Let’s do this quickly.”

He covers himself with Moody’s old Cloak to check that there’s no one suspicious inside the small supermarket. When he doesn’t see anyone he recognises, he gets back to her to tell her as much so she can make her way there and buy as much as she can without coming across as too suspicious. It’s a fine line she’s learned to walk. They’ll repeat this a few more times before their expanded backpacks are filled.

By the time they’re done, they’re no longer as awkward, simply because there isn’t space for it. It’s the whole reason people have accepted Malfoy into the Order—either you deal with each other, or one or both of you will die.

They deal with each other and get back to their safehouse without any more trouble. Ginny Weasley is already there chatting with Tonks while she waits for a share to take to the house she’s staying at. Their circulation scheme for getting supplies means everyone has to go on a supply run every now and then, and it’s not always the same pairs because this isn’t the only scheme they rotate. It also means that sometimes, they redistribute in this way instead.

As for today, Hermione hopes Ginny might stay a little longer. She could really do with someone to talk to that she doesn’t already see every day.

“Hey, Tonks,” she says. “Hey Ginny. Good to see you.”

Ginny looks good. Hermione can’t immediately place her finger on what is different, but something is.

“Since you two are having a great time doing nothing,” Malfoy drawls, “I’ll leave you to deal with this.” And with that, he puts his backpack on the ground and disappears upstairs, in that quick and nonchalant way only he seems to manage. Hermione barely has time to register it.

“Sounds like you had a fantastic time,” Ginny says, rolling her eyes.

“It wasn’t so bad,” Hermione says. “He’s alright when he really needs to be.”

It’s true, but it sounds a little ridiculous even to her own ears, so when Ginny barks out a laugh Hermione can’t help but smile too. “Are you staying for dinner, Gin?”

“Tonks asked me the same thing,” she says, “but I can’t tonight. We were thinking to do a dinner party soon, though. I’ll invite a few more people. Theo and Luna and Dean, maybe. It’d be a laugh.”

It’s striking how many of their generation live in the safehouses. The older generation already had jobs and houses before all this, of course, but it only highlights how disproportionately they’ve been hit by this war. They don’t have a job, or a house. Half of them haven’t even finished their education, and yet they’re here, fighting battles like they’ve been trained to do it. A dinner party isn’t supposed to be a big thing, it’s supposed to be something they do regularly to keep in touch with everyone from Hogwarts.

“Yeah, I suppose it would be.”

Ginny smiles and gestures at the bags. “Alright. I’ll get started with this, then.”

“Thanks,” Hermione says. “I think I’ll just… go and read a bit.”

“Of course you are,” Ginny smirks. “Haven’t you read every single book in the Order by now?”

“Twice,” Hermione says with a smile. It’s not true. Not _entirely_. “I’ve just found one I haven’t read at all yet, though, so I’m running behind.” Angelina brought it in for people to pass around just to have something to do. She tends to get them books from her own shelves, but never too many at once, so she only brings a new one in when she can take another one back home, just to keep the shelves full. Her house needs to look lived in. It needs to _feel_ lived in, because she does.

As Hermione makes her way upstairs, she wonders what that’s like, to really live somewhere. To feel comfortable. To feel at home somewhere.

But that’s not going to happen until after the war is won, probably long after, so up until then she’s going to use books to at least not have to be _here_ , the way she used to do on nights after someone had said something mean to her at school as a kid or when she was really stressed about something happening at Hogwarts.

Apparently, some things really never do change.

* * *

Minus six months.

Malfoy isn’t looking so great these days.

Hermione knows this mostly because Harry won’t stop obsessing over it, to the point where it’s getting worrying. She’s never seen Harry _not_ caring about Quidditch. She doesn’t know what’s so great about the sport that it takes precedence over everything else, but now that it doesn’t, she wishes she’d never even considered the possibility.

Even worse, he’s right. Well, in some ways. As much as she despises Draco Malfoy, she can hardly believe they would give a child the Dark Mark, or make him murder anyone.

It’s Voldemort, Hermione, of course he would! He’d murder a baby just so it wouldn’t grow up to be stronger than him, why wouldn’t he make a teenager do the same thing? They’ve had that conversation so often by now, she can hold it in her head now, voices and expressions included.

But Malfoy isn’t looking very well.

“I’m telling you, he’s up to something.”

“Malfoy is always up to something,” Ron says. “I’m not saying you’re wrong, mate, it’s just—”

“This is Hogwarts,” Hermione says. “Dumbledore’s still here. Even Voldemort never dared to try, remember?”

“Yeah, but Voldemort was never a scared teenager—”

“Come on, Harry, we’re _all_ scared now—”

“Not children of Death Eaters!”

“Children of Death Eaters who have severely disappointed their master,” she points out. “After letting you _and_ the prophecy slip through their fingers at the Ministry.”

“All the more reason for Malfoy to do something stupid.”

She shakes her head, more than a little annoyed with her best friend. Even if he is right, what are they going to do about it? Tell Dumbledore? The Headmaster knows everything that goes on in this castle. If it’s true, he’ll already know. “I’m going to the library.” It might be the very first—and probably last—time she says it and have Ron looking at her like he wouldn’t mind joining.

She hasn’t yet told them that she’s been browsing the Restricted Section on a regular basis, to read and copy everything that might be useful should the current atmosphere turn into a full-on war. There aren’t many Death Eaters, but there are plenty of people who don’t disagree enough to join the effort against them, plenty of people who will be too scared to fight, and plenty of people who aren’t Death Eaters but still profit from a Death Eater regime.

And so she reads, and takes notes, and sometimes, watches Malfoy in a dark corner of the Restricted Section frantically flipping through pages of thick old books that she never manages to find once he’s put them back. He looks like a ghost in the dark section, floating past rows of books that can’t help him get his life back. If he hadn’t made her life at school such a hell, she might even feel bad for him.

He isn’t there when she gets to the library, which is a good thing because the library is her safe place, and now it’s making her think about her bully more than anything. But the place still smells like it should, old parchment and wood and _knowledge._

How so many people can dislike a place like this is a mystery to her.

She’s going to miss this, after she leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this *may* be my favourite cliché....


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Looking back later, though, she will say that this day was the final crack in the chassis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is for everyone wondering about Harry (to some extent)!

Eleven months, fourteen days, twenty-and-a-half hours.

“Have you ever shagged anyone?”

Hermione nearly spits out her drink. “Ginny!”

“What?” Ginny says, amused. “We’re all old enough to think about it. Everyone’s doing it. Come on, Hermione, the only girl in my house is Luna and she’s great, but…”

But you don’t talk to Luna about sex. Hermione understands that much. Luna is brilliant, and brave—and weird enough that no one wants to think about that kind of conversation with her.

“Once,” Hermione says. “On New Year’s. We were a little drunk.”

“A great way to start the year, I’d say.”

Hermione laughs. “It was alright.”

Ginny snorts. “I don’t think he would’ve had the guts without the alcohol, but apparently he should leave it alone.”

She wonders if anyone would even consider that one time not being Ron, but then again, she has to admit that she wouldn’t have considered anybody else herself. Even if she already started to understand back then that he wasn’t going to be _the one_ for her.

“I suppose neither of us would have,” she admits.

“You two have always both been idiots,” Ginny says. “I wish you were really as made for each other as you two once made it seem.”

“Yes,” she agrees quietly. “Me, too.”

“I slept with Dean,” Ginny blurts out the real reason she started this conversation. She’s not looking at Hermione; Dean is on the other side of the room laughing at something Fred said, a glass of Butterbeer in his hand. It looks like a normal party setting, so different from the usual gloom that hangs over this house. Having other people over does them all a world of good.

“Didn’t you date him a few years back?”

“Yeah, but that was never… I mean, we liked each other, but we were never going to stay together for the rest of our lives. We were kids.” Ginny shakes her head. “Merlin, hear me talk. That’s not even two years ago. We’re _still_ kids. Anyway, what I was trying to say—we were dating, yeah, but that was all we did. We dated, and we snogged, and we groped a little bit and all, but it was Hogwarts. You couldn’t just sleep with someone.”

Hermione has to admit that she’s never thought about it. Her first sexual experience came after Hogwarts, and a dorm room didn’t really invite for sexual activity in your bedroom. She barely even touched herself there. She’s never really been that interested in it in the first place, and no one really cared to talk to her about it, so she never knew if that was normal.

“He’s my first,” Ginny says.

Somehow, that wasn’t what Hermione was expecting. Perhaps she just always thought Ginny and Harry would be the kind of couple who got together in high school and stayed together for the rest of their lives.

In other times, perhaps they might have.

“Was it… good?”

“Yeah,” Ginny says. “It’s like… that bit of spark never left, you know? And Dean’s really sweet.” She sounds like she’s trying to convince herself of something—not of her words, exactly, but something else. A feeling, perhaps.

“So what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. I just wish…” She shakes her head.

“You wish it had been Harry,” Hermione guesses. Judging by the silence that follows, it’s a good guess. “Oh, Gin.”

“Don’t,” Ginny says quietly. “I feel so _bad_ , because he deserves so much better than that. Dean, I mean. He deserves someone who isn’t grieving her _other_ ex. And Harry deserves—Harry deserves…” She shakes her head. “Better.”

“We all deserve better.” She takes a sip of her own Butterbeer. A rather large sip. “I don’t think either of them would judge you. They wouldn’t have the right to judge you.” She sighs. “We’re all grieving people,” she says. “And we’re all craving people, too.”

“You’re right,” Ginny says. “I just wish it felt like that.” She downs the rest of her glass. “Bloody hell, look at me whining about boys. I had sex. It was good. I should be celebrating.”

“I wasn’t really about to celebrate it then, either,” Hermione says, hoping to at least make her friend feel better. “I just wanted to get showered and dressed. Sex is weird.”

Ginny laughs. “Yeah, it is, isn’t it? Good weird, though.”

Months later, Hermione still hasn’t convinced herself that it is. She’s thought for a long time that it was just because sex with her best friend was just a little too awkward, or because it was both their first times and they weren’t quite sure yet what they were doing. She’s wondered, too, if there’s just something wrong with her that makes her lack that urge that everybody else seems to have. But she touches herself, sometimes, so she can’t be lacking it.

There’s nothing _wrong_ with her.

“I think I’m going to go talk to him,” Ginny says after a while, still looking at Dean. “I just don’t want it to become awkward, you know?” She’s off before Hermione can agree.

“Disgusting, isn’t it?” an amused voice says behind her. “All this drama about a bit of shagging.”

“She feels guilty,” Hermione says without looking around, as though her explanation is going to matter.

“It’s just sex, Granger,” Theo says.

“So you keep saying,” she replies. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were trying to convince _me_ about something.”

“Only if I thought I had a chance,” he says, taking Ginny’s empty seat. “I’d be proud to be that person that finally got Hermione Granger to sleep in his bed, but alas. She must be waiting for something even more incredible than me.”

“Or maybe I just wouldn’t sleep with the biggest slut in the Order.”

He laughs. “No, your standards are higher than just that.”

“I’m glad you think so highly of me.”

He raises his glass in her direction. She clinks it with her own. “It’s good to see you again, Theo.”

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” He looks around the room, at all the people pretending to be regular people for once whose biggest problems are all about kissing and shagging. “And yet we’re all still here. I suppose miracles do still exist.”

“That’s not funny.”

“No,” he agrees. “It really isn’t.” She can feel him look at her, though she’s staring into the room. “Why aren’t you pretending with the rest of them, Granger?”

“I don’t see you doing that either.”

“That’s a terrible argument,” he says, rightfully. “And I’ll be up and chatting in a minute. I’m sure you’re not about to be doing that.”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Physically, sure.” He shakes his head. “Come on, Hermione. We never talked back at school, but I’m sure you were never as distant as this.”

He’s right. She is more distant than most, and that’s saying something. She’s never been great at making friends, at asking the right questions and remember the right things. It isn’t that she’s not interested in other people, just that her head is usually not entirely there. It’s worse now, though, because her head isn’t in the present at all unless it’s forced into it.

That’s why she hates and loves battles so much, both at the same time. They force her to be aware of everything going on around her, and she isn’t sure if she should welcome that or hate it.

“Fine,” she says, getting up. “I’ll show you pretending.”

* * *

She was broken by a culmination of events. She thinks it may have started with Malfoy calling her _Mudblood_ when she was thirteen, but she didn’t fully realise it until the moment she aimed a wand at her parents’ heads to remove all memory of her. A person who is whole would never imagine such a thing.

Looking back later, though, she will say that this day was the final crack in the chassis.

Five months, twenty-four days, twenty hours.

It’s cold outside. There’s snow lightly falling down that she would have loved had it happened at any other time. It’s beautiful. It’s refreshing. It makes her more nervous than ever because she can’t erase her footsteps and it’s going to be hours until they’re covered again, if at all.

They don’t look like themselves, she and Harry. They look like an old Muggle couple. She’s well aware of that, and yet her senses are heightened and ever single twig that seems out of place makes her nervous. Somehow, someone could _know_. She can’t shake the feeling that they’re being watched.

It doesn’t help that they’re right in front of a large statue of Harry’s parents, and he’s putting down flowers that she’s by magic. It’s dark and she can’t see anyone around, but they of all people should know that doesn’t mean anything.

Harry gets up and puts an arm around her shoulder for comfort. She wraps her own arm around his waist. It’s not enough, after all these years that he’s missed with them, but it’s something. It’s the only thing she can do right now.

When he turns to leave, she knows to turn with him wordlessly.

That’s when she sees it.

“Harry, stop.” They’re not even out of the graveyard yet. They’ve barely made it past the Abbott grave they found earlier. “Someone’s watching us. I can tell. Someone is there.”

She can feel his arm tightening around her shoulders, even though they are perfectly still. Nothing happens. Nothing moves, not a sound is heard. “Are you sure?”

“I saw something move, I could have sworn…” She breaks away from him just so she can free her wand arm, in case something unexpectedly attacks them.

“We look like Muggles,” Harry says.

“Muggles that have just been laying flowers at your parents’ grave,” she repeats the argument she’s just had with herself. “I’m sure there’s someone over there.”

“It’s probably a cat,” Harry says tightly. Hermione really hopes he’s just trying to convince himself of that, because she wants to slap him for not listening. They’ve felt unjustifiably safe before only to have it thrown back into their faces. They aren’t safe anywhere in the world right now. They can’t underestimate any sign of possible danger.

They hurry out of the graveyard, as well as they can on the slippery ground, and Harry throws the Cloak over them as soon as they’re out of there and able to walk closer together again. Hermione’s heart is beating far too fast for an evening like this, with the snow still falling and Christmas carols coming out of the local pub, sung by many happy guests that have no idea there are a witch and wizard in their town right now.

“Let’s go this way,” she murmurs. Leading them down the road out of the village. It’s dark, which means anything could be lurking out here, but it also means they themselves will be harder to spot.

She trusts the Cloak, and yet…

But first they pass another row of cottages, warm light streaming out of their windows behind which people are celebrating Christmas. It’s difficult not to feel jealous of people who have no idea that there’s a war going on, who can still enjoy the holidays with the people they love the most, with a proper dinner and plenty of laughter. It hurts her stomach a little. It’s probably a good thing this isn’t the time to linger on it.

“How are we going to find Bathilda’s house?” she asks instead. “Harry?”

But Harry doesn’t seem to be listening. If anything, he’s speeding up.

“Harry—”

“Look,” he says quietly, with reverence in his voice. “Hermione, look at it.”

It’s there—not Bathilda’s house, but the Potters’, covered in dark ivy and snow and with the right side of the top floor entirely blown apart.

And so is something else.

A heavily muffled figure is hobbling up the lane towards them, surrounded by the bright lights in the distant square. It’s moving very slowly, but there is no doubt in Hermione’s mind that it’s coming here for _them_ , even though they’re supposed to be invisible.

Harry is still staring up at the cottage that was once is home, and she feels terrible for breaking him out of that, but there’s no other choice. Someone _was_ watching them tonight. She pinches his arm just to make sure he’s seeing the same thing she is.

It’s a woman—a very old one—and she can definitely see them. She raises a cloved hand and beckons.

“Are you Bathilda?”

Hermione gasps in surprise. She hadn’t been expecting Harry to speak. She also hadn’t been expecting the figure to nod and beckon again. 

She isn’t sure about it. The idea of simply following someone to an unknown location without a word makes her nervous, but Harry is already moving, and she can’t start an argument with him now. She can’t let him go alone, either.

At least she doesn’t have to hurry after him, because Bathilda is very slow.

In fact, everything from that point on happens like slow motion. Shuffling along the cottages. Waiting for Bathilda to fumble and open the door. Standing in her living room, waiting for some type of conversation, some kind of explanation. Watching her unwrap her scarf, showing her scalp through whisps of white hair.

Hermione’s trying to keep an eye on Bathilda and get a feeling for her surroundings at the same time. It smells like mothballs and dust, which is probably because Bathilda can barely lift a hand when it’s empty, let alone manage to clean her house by herself. It looks like there’s no one around to help her out. It looks _gross._

She leaves the room, which allows Hermione to whisper, “Harry, I’m not sure about this.”

“Look at the size of her,” Harry whispers back. “We could take her.”

Sure.

Bathilda waits, and stares, and finally silently asks Harry to follow her upstairs. Alone. Which doesn’t sit _right_ with Hermione, because surely Dumbledore would have told her Harry wouldn’t be all by himself? Surely?

She waits, though. She waits because she trusts Harry, and Harry seems to trust Bathilda—

But then there’s a loud crash upstairs and she decides that no, she’s Harry’s friend and she will not let him go anywhere alone, she will go check up on them—

But it’s not Bathilda up there in the room, it’s a snake, _the_ snake, ready to attack Harry.

“No!”

She blows it off, but that doesn’t kill the snake, it just makes her angry and right in between Harry and Hermione.

“He’s coming,” Harry gasps. “Hermione, he’s coming.”

“Get out,” she says. “To the last place, _Now._ ” They could fight the snake, maybe, but they can’t fight Voldemort. The best thing they can do is get out before he gets here.

So she does. To the last spot they camped at, the first one she could think of.

“Come on, Harry…”

She gives him half a minute.

When that’s not enough, she Apparates back to Godric’s Hollow.

Voldemort is no longer there. Neither is the snake.

And neither is Harry.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You don’t get to decide whether you want to be a Death Eater, not once you’re involved with him, and plenty of us never got the chance _not_ to be.”

Eleven months, twenty-three days, three hours.

Sometimes she spends the night with him. Not in the way others spend the night together, mind. They’re both on separate sofas, usually reading a book, not saying much more than asking the other if the other may want some tea. Very, very rarely, they talk about things, though they haven’t done that since they didn’t kiss. In fact, this is the first time they’ve been entirely alone since then.

_Things_ mainly consist of complaining about books, because those are always safe topics, and every other subject is not. Every other topic will likely just spur them into another argument.

Had someone told her a few years—even months—ago that things would be like this, she would not have believed them.

She appreciates the way they can sit in silence, aware of each other’s presence but not really acknowledging it—not in any good or bad way, just the way it is. She doesn’t feel the urge to speak, and she finds she doesn’t mind so much. There’s a reason she never became close friends with the girls in their year—Hermione isn’t the person to giggle and gossip, or to talk very much at all. She likes Harry because he understands that she doesn’t always need to talk about things, even if he can be rather hard-headed and loud sometimes.

Something tells her that Malfoy is like that, too.

“Merlin, Granger, do Muggles really _enjoy_ this garbage?”

Well, generally, anyway.

“You’re reading an absolute classic.”

“Sure,” he says, closing the book and rolling his eyes. “And it’s absolute garbage. All they do is attend ballroom parties and pretend they don’t like each other. It’s insipid. Is this what happens when there is no magic in your life? Do Muggles live this way?”

“They did two hundred years ago,” Hermione says. “I thought you could read.”

“I’m trying to read something that doesn’t remind me of being stuck here.” He throws the book on the table, well-read and falling apart in pieces. “Not this.”

“I thought you, of all people, would appreciate this,” she says, rather smugly. It wasn’t a subtle book to give him to read. He knew that, too, when he first saw it. She has a feeling that’s why he picked it up and started it without a word, just to silently stick it out without giving the rest of them the satisfaction of seeing his frustration.

After so many months, they shouldn’t still be this petty, but here they all are.

“Sure,” he says again. “I appreciate a book about people only pretending to hate each other. Really gets me out of this craphole where no one needs to pretend.”

She stares at him.

There’s no self-pity in his voice. Not even bitterness. She tries to find it in his eyes, but he doesn’t look at her. His jaw is clenching and unclenching, though.

“I…” she starts, but she has no words to follow that up with.

“Am proud and prejudiced,” Malfoy says.

“It’s not the same.”

“No,” he agrees. “At least I learned that my ideas about people weren’t necessarily the truth.”

She closes her book, slowly, if only to buy herself some more time to think about an answer. Any answer. But he’s right in this regard. She hasn’t really given him the benefit of the doubt since she saw him here. “It was a joke,” she says, gesturing at the book. It’s the weakest argument she’s ever presented, and she hates to admit that.

“It wasn’t,” he says. “Don’t try to fool me, Granger, I’ve been here long enough.” He finally looks up, and she wants to look away immediately. It’s not bitterness that she finds there, it’s exhaustion. “You could have at least chosen a book that’s good.”

“It is good,” she says, weakly.

He shakes his head and wordlessly heats up the tea that has gotten cold on the table. He doesn’t say anything else, either, which leaves her squirming in her seat a little. It means that the uncomfortable silence can only be broken by her, and she has no idea how to do that. She used to judge Ron and Harry for having the emotional range of a teaspoon, but when it comes down to it, she can’t even have a single emotional conversation like this.

“Forget it,” Malfoy says.

“No.” She bites her lip, but the word is already out, and she can’t go back now. “You’re right. I mean, you _deserved_ hostility and suspicion. But I guess that by now, you don’t.”

“How gracious.”

“You’re not innocent.”

“I don’t need you to remind me of that, Granger. I’ve already got the Mark for that.” He smiles bitterly. “Tough to hear, huh? Because there’s a Dark Mark in your midst? Or because you people can’t accept it as a bloody punishment?”

“The Mark is taken willingly,” she argues softly.

“Not by me it wasn’t,” he says. “Or are you Order people the only ones who are allowed to sacrifice their sanity to save their family? That’s right,” he says when she flinches, “not so untarnished now, are we?”

“Shut up,” she says.

“I accepted it because I thought it would help me make up for my father’s failures. If I could only do that, then maybe our house would rise again. He’d get my father out of Azkaban. They’d stop treating my mother like dirt. Of course,” he continues sardonically, “I also took it because he doesn’t give you a choice. This thing isn’t optional.”

It makes sense. She doesn’t want it to, but it does.

And he isn’t done yet.

“You know how someone gets the Mark?” he asks, not caring about her response. “He chooses you. Not because you want it—Greyback’s wanted to get it for decades, but he’s not unsullied, is he? Can’t be a Pureblood if your blood’s not human.” He shrugs. “He chooses you either because you’re exceptionally loyal and you want it, or because you’re not and you should be. You don’t get to decide whether you want to be a Death Eater, not once you’re involved with him, and like you, Granger, plenty of us never got the chance _not_ to be.”

She has nothing to say to that, and he knows it, too.

“Do you think he gave me that Mark because he considered me one of them, Granger? Do you think he saw a scrawny teenager with anger issues and truly thought that this would be the person to kill Dumbledore, when he himself had never managed it?” He shakes his head. “I got this Mark because he knew I wasn’t any of that. I got it because he knew I would fail.”

“Why are you telling me all this now?” It’s the middle of the night, and they’ve never had a proper conversation about anything in all the time that they’ve both been here.

“Because you’re the biggest hypocrite out of all of them,” he says. “And because you’re the most likely to listen.”

She stares at him, confused and frustrated and a little lost. “What do you want from me, Malfoy?”

“Honestly, Granger, I don’t know.”

“Then there’s no point to this conversation.” And there was no point to him interrupting her reading pleasure, either. “I’m going back to bed.”

He doesn’t say anything as she gets up and makes her way upstairs to her room. She thinks he watches her, though. It makes her a little self-conscious, but she refuses to look back.

* * *

Seven months, two days, one hour.

The voice comes when it’s just her and Ron in the living room. It’s almost like it’s planned that way, except she knows that isn’t possible. She doesn’t think Harry knows about this house or has heard the Fidelius Charm. She doesn’t think he means to send them this message anyway, because it doesn’t come through any means they know.

“ _Ron._ ”

“Yeah.”

He’d been playing with the Deluminator, which hasn’t really proven any worth so far other than turning off the lights, but now the thing itself is lighting up with every word.

She’s been happy to hear people’s voices before, but never like this.

_…Ron and Hermione that I’m alright..._

It’s not much and yet it’s everything. It takes a while during which Hermione and Ron just stare at the Deluminator, which is still emanating sounds but few words that can actually be understood— _Horcrux_ being one of those—and then at each other, before either of them speaks. It’s not Hermione, because she can’t get the words around the lump that’s formed in her throat, and it feels like the only way to get it out is to push it off along with rivers of tears.

“Alright, eh,” Ron finally says. “And still on the hunt, I guess. That’s… great.”

Considering that Ron wasn’t there when they were attacked by Nagini and got separated, precisely because he got sick of ‘the hunt’, Hermione isn’t quite sure what to say to that. “Yeah, it is.”

Neither of them is convinced.

“Does that mean he’s going after them on his own?” Ron asks. “He wouldn’t be that thick-headed, would he?”

She wishes she had an answer to that. She _does_ have an answer to that. Yes, it’s very likely that means Harry’s going after the Horcruxes by himself, which sounds exactly like him. He probably feels like he put them in mortal peril and he should be going further by himself to avoid getting his best friends killed; the same way he was thinking before they left in the first place.

“He would,” she says quietly. “You know he would.”

“That _prick_ ,” Ron says.

“You did leave.”

They’ve never properly talked about it. She arrived at the Order with the news that Harry was gone—maybe dead, maybe not, but definitely lost—and that elephant was big enough to fill every single room they occupied, until it became even worse to consider talking about than it was not to.

“I wanted to come back,” Ron says. “I did, Hermione. I know I was… Well, I was an arse.”

She doesn’t dispute it, though he looks at her like he wants her to.

“Anyway, uh… I regretted it right away. I was planning to come back, but then of course I couldn’t find you again, and I had no idea if it was because you’d already left or because of the enchantments, or both…” He shakes his head. “I went to Shell Cottage. Bill and Fleur took me in. They didn’t judge me, not out loud, but they really should have. And then you turned up and I knew that what I did was even _worse_ , because what if…”

“What if you could’ve made a difference?” It wasn’t meant to sound so cynical. He might be right. An extra wand usually can’t hurt. That’s the thing, though—he might be right, and she hates that, because it doesn’t matter if he is or not. He wasn’t there. They’ll never know. It still hurts her more than she thought it did.

“Well, yeah,” Ron says, a little sheepishly.

She scoffs, just because she knows it will sting a little. After he left, she cried for days. She missed Ron, she felt abandoned by him, and she felt guilty for crying so much when Harry was still there and hurting, too, but she couldn’t stop herself.

Those weren’t good days.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I know I’ve never… I should’ve apologised sooner, but I didn’t know how to bring it up. I didn’t want to bring it up.”

Part of her wants to stay angry at him, but she knows it’d be unfair. She didn’t want to bring it up again, either, even though it would’ve been better for both of them to talk it out. She’s always prided herself for understanding emotions a lot better than her friends, but that still doesn’t mean she knows how to deal with them.

“You should have,” she finally says. “I guess it doesn’t matter now, though.”

His eyes tell her that he’s wondering if it would have mattered at any other point, if things would have been different between them if they’d talked this out before sleeping together, right after she got to the Order. Maybe she wouldn’t have left his bed without the intention to ever get back into it, maybe they wouldn’t have been so distant these past few weeks.

He’s wrong, she thinks. It was a terrible idea to sleep together when she was still angry at him, only days after seeing his face again, but it would never have turned out any different. She already knew they weren’t compatible, and yet something in her said she needed to be _sure_.

“No,” he says. “I guess not.”

Later, they’ll know that they had to have this conversation to become comfortable around each other again. She tells him she’s sorry, that she shouldn’t have slept with him when there was still so much lingering resentment, but that she doesn’t regret it and still knows she’s not going to do it again. He tells her he was always a little frustrated and upset knowing that she still felt that way when it happened, but they both decided it was a good idea at the time anyway so it’s not fair to act like this is on her.

They’re both right. They both know this.

“If it had been different,” Ron says, “would we…?”

“Nothing would have been different.”

“Alright.” He almost brightens up at this, as if a weight just fell off his shoulders. “Alright, good. So er, Harry, eh?”

And just like that, they’re okay again, or as okay as they’re going to get given the current circumstances. “Yeah,” she says, smiling a little. “Harry, eh.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did not have it in me to leave Harry Potter out of this story.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Granger,” Malfoy says, out of breath and fumbling with the buttons on her shirt, “you’re thinking too loud.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm impatient and I'm not _really_ all that sorry.

Twelve months, one day, four hours.

“The Order is done for. The Dark Lord has won. You might as well accept that and get out of here, maybe you can still live your life then.”

Here’s the absolute worst thing: A part of her believes that he was right. Harry’s dead, the fight is over, and they might as well all flee abroad to see if they can still build a life there. Forget about Britain, about Hogwarts and friends and family, and start all over again somewhere no one knows their names.

She’s considered it. France always seemed nice, when she’d go there on holiday with her parents. Or she could go all the way and try to find her parents in Australia, find a way to live with them there.

Somehow, she doesn’t think she’d get the chance. She’d be hunted down for being best friends with Harry Potter no matter where she goes, and she couldn’t leave anyway. She could never simply _forget about Britain_ and leave everyone else here to rot. Besides, even a single person trying to leave the country would be noticed and Snatched, let alone all of them—and she could never leave without all of them.

“You’re fretting again.”

Not even Malfoy.

It’s been a month since they not-kissed, and for some reason it’s less awkward than she thought it would be. It took a few days, but then she managed to shelve it in her mind as _necessary evil_ , and he must have done the same, because they’re back to their normal way of interacting. Kind of.

“I’m reading.”

“No, you’re not,” he drawls, lowering his own book. “I can _hear_ that brain of yours making overtime, and it’s distracting me.”

She’s silent for a while. He must think she’s not going to reply, because there’s a disappointed shrug and he’s picking up the book again before she says, “Do you think it’s over?”

“What in the Hell are you talking about?”

“The war.” She bites her lip. “We haven’t… It’s been ages since we fought anyone. It’s like we’re just hiding now.”

“Hiding keeps us alive, Granger, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“Yeah, but…” She’s not sure where she wants to go with this. “You came to our side and now we’re not even fighting. You would’ve been better off staying where you were.” She shakes her head. “Harry’s probably dead and we’re just here doing nothing because no one knows how to win this war. Doesn’t that mean… doesn’t that mean it’s over?”

There’s something about the look in his eyes that makes her want to recoil. If she had to call it anything, she’d call it _disgust_ —it’s a look that’s very familiar on his face and yet at the same time it isn’t, because it isn’t the same as it used to be at Hogwarts. It isn’t like he’s seeing something filthy crawl up a wall; it’s like he’s seeing disappointment personified. “I never thought you’d be the type.”

“The type for what?” she asks, quietly, afraid to hear the answer.

“To give up.” He narrows his eyes at her, as if trying to figure something out—or to shoot lasers at her with them, she’s not entirely sure. “Merlin, Granger. Being friends with Potter and all, you’d think you at least had some guts.”

“Excuse me for wondering,” she snaps. “What’s made you this morally superior lately, anyway? Are you just staying up so you can piss me off again?”

He’s staring. She doesn’t appreciate it. In the past year, she’s learned to accept Malfoy as one of them, even if she doesn’t like him. But she won’t let him tell her what she already knows—that she’s a coward who should be finishing what they started with Harry, but can’t. She has no idea what or where the Horcruxes are, let alone how to destroy them. They’ve planted seeds, not necessarily telling everyone what they’re looking for but making sure people know to keep an eye out for specific things. Valuable things.

Nothing has come of it, because no one knows where to take it from here. Sometimes she believes it’s only made things worse. Ever since, it feels increasingly like they’ve given up, because simply fighting isn’t going to end it. The best they can do now is hide.

She doesn’t know why she brought that up to Malfoy, either. Perhaps she needs to know if what she feels is true, if someone who doesn’t know about what they did in those first few months reads the atmosphere the same way or if it’s just her own unnecessary worrying. She just should’ve picked someone else to ask it.

“I ran,” he says after a while, words forming slowly like he’s still thinking about the words while speaking them. “I ran from everything I’d ever known, knowing that they’d torture me if they found out I was even considering it, and kill me if they caught me doing it. My own family.” He laughs bitterly. “Aunt Bella, anyway. They’re all really good Legilimens, did you know? I was sure my walls weren’t going to keep them out.”

He’s never talked about this before, not around her at least. He’s probably told all this to others—Remus and Kingsley and McGonagall—who needed to know to decide if he’d be allowed to stay, but not anyone else. She’s aware that she’s holding her breath waiting for him to continue, and lets it out slowly. He doesn’t appear to notice.

“They would’ve called my running cowardice,” he says, scoffing. “And none of _you_ people would ever associate bravery with any Slytherin, let alone any Death Eater. But my mother was brave.” His voice is soft now, head not entirely here anymore. “She made me get out,” he admits. “She made me, and she helped me, and she probably died for her efforts, because she would rather die a violent death than see her son be part of that regime.”

How did they get to this point in the conversation? When did it get from him accusing her of having no guts to him talking about his mother’s death?

“Why are you telling me this?” she asks, when he doesn’t seem inclined to continue.

“You people think war is just about fighting,” he says. “Like you think bravery is equal to stupidity, rushing in and hoping not to die. My war’s different, Granger. My war’s always been about staying alive, and keeping people alive that I love.”

She’s never heard him talk this much. It doesn’t sound like the Malfoy she thought she knew at all. He’s speaking in hoarse whispers, like his voice is thinking the same thing.

“No, it’s not over.” There’s something in his eyes that she can’t place. “We’re still fighting. Just not in the Gryffindor way.”

She notices he’s rubbing his arm, the one with the Mark, not in an absent way but in an angry one, like he’s trying to rub it off. “Did it hurt?”

“Of course it bloody hurt,” he says, not even following her gaze but aware of what she’s asking anyway. “Did you think it was a tickle?”

“I’m sorry.”

A laugh, though there’s not a trace of humour in it. “This entire story and all you got from it was that.”

A sigh, then, from her this time. “What did you expect me to say?”

A shrug. “Something else. Anything else. Just not _pity_.” It’s spit out like something filthy, and maybe it is. Maybe she needs to accept that she doesn’t know everything.

Like what to say right now.

She’ll never know if what happens next is borne from the lack of words to say, or of something entirely different. It’s something that might have been a long time coming that suddenly explodes out of her now. She _will_ always know that it was her who took the first step, because he was still on the sofa and suddenly she was, too, legs straddling him and lips pressing against his without any memory of actually making that move. Without even the thought that he might push her off.

He doesn’t.

If anything, he pulls her closer, like they’re both touch-starved and care only about each other in that moment, without any worry about what it might mean after tonight. She hasn’t done anything like this since Ron. She knows Malfoy’s had sex—she knows because certain people did it just so they could brag about it, because Malfoy’s the capital-O Other, and he’s dark and exciting. An achievement.

It doesn’t feel like an achievement. It feels angry and hungry and _wanting_ , and she doesn’t know why because he _pisses her off_ but all she can think of right now is that it feels _good_. It’s nothing like her first kiss with Ron, nothing sweet or awkward about it. It’s two people desperate for _something_ , for touch and love and an outlet for their anger and frustration and finding it in each other, and this isn’t something she ever thought she’d feel but she does.

She does.

He’s warm under her lips and under the touch of her hands. His fingers moving over and then under her sweater are pleasantly cool and a little ticklish on her sides. His breath is hot, ghosting over her lips, her neck, her ears. “You can still go back.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

She can feel his smirk before she sees it. “Then we better move this upstairs, shall we?”

She almost doesn’t want to. Moving this upstairs means she has to get up, off him, and that means that she’ll have time to wonder what on earth she’s doing. To get nervous. To back out. But he’s right, they can’t stay here, anyone could walk in on them and she’s not ready to have _that_ conversation. Least of all if the person walking in on them is Ron.

There’s no real time to back out. They’re downstairs at one moment and in his bedroom the next, and she knows they haven’t Apparated but it still feels like there was nothing in between—or perhaps that’s simply because he’s smacked her against a wall now and she’s hiking a leg up against his back and pulling him in by his shirt almost forcefully.

This isn’t her, but apparently it is, because it’s conflicting to want to pull him in and push him off both at once but it feels good nonetheless, and she wants to kiss him and slap him at the same time (she doesn’t), and somehow it doesn’t _matter_ that it feels that way because there’s only here and now. They may be dead tomorrow or live in hiding like this for years to come.

Maybe in that type of situation, it’s better to have sex with someone you _don’t_ like.

“Granger,” Malfoy says, out of breath and fumbling with the buttons on her shirt, “you’re thinking too loud.”

“Sorry,” she gasps, for no good reason.

Undressing is clumsy and weird but not awkward. He doesn’t stare at her naked body like it’s something precious, and she doesn’t think about how weird it is that people want to see others naked at all. They just _are_.

She’s not even as aware of the Mark as she was afraid she would be.

It’s rough and somewhat impersonal. It’s sweaty and sticky and breathless, and through all these things, it’s still _good_.

The feeling of something exploding in her hits as hard as everything else does tonight, when she’s bent over the bed with him behind her, and when she’s trying to catch her breath and feels him come to orgasm himself, she thinks she might somewhat understand why people enjoy sex so much after all.

She doesn’t remember going back to her own room afterwards, but she must have, because that’s where she wakes up in the morning. Still tired as ever. Still terrified that this is the rest of their lives now. Nothing’s really changed, and she’s never felt so much relief at that knowledge.

Malfoy still only greets her with a grumpy nod downstairs. They still don’t talk. There’s no awkward navigating around each other; no need to reframe their way of being with each other, because there never was any. The only person looking at her strange is Ron, but she elects to ignore that. He’s the last person she wants to talk to about this, and the last person who’ll want to hear.

Other than that, life goes on.

At least they think so.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Your sister-in-law is trying to kill him,” Ron says, like he’s talking about the weather, but with his wand at the ready.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm having what might be my first hangover since the whole covid shit started but have a chapter!

Twelve months, eight days, zero hours.

She’s been thinking about her conversation with Malfoy so much these past days she thinks she must be missing other news. _We’re still fighting, just not in the Gryffindor way_. She still hasn’t figured out whether that’s a good thing.

It’s the middle of the night and she’s—still? again?—thinking about it when it happens.

A loud _bang_ , like an explosion, that wakes up everyone who managed to fall asleep and shocks everyone else into action. A sound like that is never a good sign, but they especially know that this isn’t a car backfiring, unrelated to them.

There have been times before when she’s had to get dressed quick, but this may be the fastest she’s ever been. Maybe it’s the fact that she can see light through the curtains of her bedroom window, hear other voices already awake and yelling. Maybe she’s just yearning for action, the Gryffindor way.

That’s what she gets, anyway.

“What’s going on?”

“Lestrange is going on,” Angelina says, voice angry, hand gripping her wand tight. “Be careful, we don’t know who else is here yet.”

“Everyone out of bed?”

“Don’t know.” She doesn’t look at Hermione. “I was one of the first to get down here. We just wanted to make sure no one else got hurt.”

“Copied,” Hermione says. She’s back into the house in another two seconds, banging on every door, checking for either the affirmation that their inhabitants are awake or not in the room at all. Malfoy yanks open the door just before she can hit it—she can only stop herself in time to at least not smack her fist into his chest _too_ hard. “On it,” he says tightly before she can explain, and then he’s off.

Opening the door to Remus and Tonks’s room makes her a little nervous, but possible awkwardness is worth it if it can save lives. She needn’t have worried. It’s empty. They’re probably already outside.

Fred isn’t in his room, but George is, and she does have to press the urgency of the situation on him before he’s dressed. He won’t say it out loud, but she knows the cursed ear still bothers him sometimes. He’s not deaf. He’s just plagued by a constant buzzing sound on that side that makes him take potions to fall asleep sometimes because he simply can’t otherwise, and she knows he relies on others to make sure to get him when exactly this kind of thing happens.

That leaves Ron.

It’s not fair to be hurt when there’s two people coming out of Ron’s room when he doesn’t share it with anyone, not after what she did with Malfoy mere days ago. She still can’t help the sting of jealousy that runs through her when he comes out with Lavender Brown, of all people. Lavender’s more serious these days, some gossip but definitely no giggles left, and she looks the part of a serious fighter right now. Her hair’s pulled up in a messy ponytail and she’s fully dressed with her sleeves rolled up to her elbows and her wand at the ready. “Attack?”

“Lestrange,” Hermione confirms.

“Thanks for the warning.”

Ron, for his part, is a little more self-conscious, scratching his neck when he finally looks at Hermione after Lavender runs off downstairs. “Uh, it’s not—”

“We’re under attack,” she interrupts, because she really doesn’t want to have this conversation with him and she has no right to say anything about it anyway. “Now is not the time.” And because she can’t really leave him standing there with that insecurity in his eyes, she adds, “You can sleep with whoever you want, Ron. I’m not your keeper.”

“I know, but—”

But there’s a scream and a loud cackle from outside, and this isn’t the time to stand here idly having a conversation about anything, let alone something this trivial. They both know it. They both turn at the same time and run.

Bellatrix Lestrange is the only Death Eater to fight without the robes and the mask—she prefers wearing long black dresses and a maniacal grin, which both suit her perfectly and make her somehow more terrifying than the expressionless masks and formless shapes of the others. Bellatrix doesn’t fight, she _dances_. She’s quick and graceful, and it would be beautiful to watch if it didn’t make it a lot harder for any of them to duel her. She’s too fast. Too slippery.

She’s fighting Malfoy, Lavender and Fred at the same time and neither manage to hit her with any spell. With the speed Bellatrix fights at, it’s half a miracle they’re able to stave off _her_ curses.

Remus and Tonks are battling Rodolphus Lestrange. Angelina’s against the wall of the house, cradling her shoulder and looking angry while George does his best to patch her up while shooting worried glances at his brother.

Something is wrong.

Bellatrix is an extremely good duellist, but the fact that there’s only two of them here doesn’t sit right. They knew about the safehouse somehow, so surely they knew how many people stay here…

Hermione is about to shrug it off and run to the aid of Remus and Tonks when a jet of light comes right at her. It’s too unexpected to block it—all she can do is dive off to the side and hope Ron does the same thing next to her in time. It hits the house behind them and shatters at least part of a few bricks.

“What was that?” Ron asks, slightly panicked.

“More of them.”

“Bloody hell.”

You might say that.

She knows the direction the curse came from but there’s no movement there, nothing that indicates anyone being there. She sends a Stunner in that general direction anyway, just in case. Nothing happens, but another spell comes from a different direction.

“They’re trying to pick us off while we’re distracted,” Hermione says, because that’s the closest thing to making sense.

“That’s not going to work.” Ron’s snarl tells her he’s saying it more to convince himself than because he’s convinced of the truth of his words. Because why wouldn’t it, if they can’t find the person trying to do it? When they don’t even know how many others there might be?

How are they ever going to find out?

“We need to move beyond them,” Hermione says, indicating their friends fighting the Lestranges. “They’re going to go for them when they’re preoccupied with duelling.”

“They’d kill their own people.”

“They’re not shooting Killing Curses,” she points out. “Cover me.”

They don’t fight together as often as they once did, but they still make a good team. She makes sure to swerve when she runs, ducking at random moments to throw off any aims. Ron should be doing the same just a little way behind her. 

Whoever is hiding just behind the trees isn’t using a Cloak. There’s a dark shape there that’s barely discernible but _moves_ , a shadow wanting to scare them but failing. They’re human. She can hurt human.

There’s no time to wonder when she’s become this person. She’s right in front of the shape, and he’s wearing his mask but the way his long, blond hair is sticking out from under his hood gives him away. “You.”

She wants to curse him, but he’s faster, deflecting her spell with ease. “I’m here for my son.”

“You’re not getting to him.”

A curse that she deflects as easily as he did hers. “You do not get to decide that, girl.”

“Neither do you,” Ron snaps beside her. “Attacking us from your hiding spot—thought you Death Eaters were at least less _spineless_ than that.”

She doesn’t see Lucius Malfoy take off his mask, but suddenly it’s his face she’s looking at. He looks gaunt and unhappy. She can’t say she feels sorry for him. “I need to see my son.”

“Your sister-in-law is trying to kill him,” Ron says, like he’s talking about the weather, but with his wand at the ready.

Lucius Malfoy lurches forward a little, like he wants to break out into a run but stops himself just in time. “I will see my son,” he says coldly, “and you two will not stop me.”

“Try us,” Ron snaps, which was the wrong thing to say if he didn’t want to get hurt with a Cruciatus Curse. Hermione hears herself scream even before she fully realises what’s happening.

“I will,” Lucius Malfoy snaps back, breaking off just in time to deflect Hermione’s counter spell. It’s just her against him when Ron is trying to catch his breath on the ground, and she knows she won’t stand a chance if it comes to a full-on duel.

It doesn’t matter. She’ll have to try.

Magical duels are as exhausting as she imagines Muggle fights are. You slash your wand like it’s a sword, sometimes with particularly complicated handwork. There’s foot placement involved, because you can’t be attacked with flashes of light you know will hurt you, if not kill you, without flinching back.

But Lucius is also exhausted from the war, and not at his fittest. If nothing else, that makes him just that bit slower that Hermione needs to get through this.

At least long enough for someone to jump in unexpectedly and disarm Lucius.

She wants to thank Ron, but he just looks confused and unsteady on his feet, and there’s no time to see what’s going on—Lucius Malfoy is taking a lunge at her and this time it _is_ Ron who jumps in just in time, and this time the curse can’t be deflected—the man’s arms snap to his sides and his legs snap together and he falls forward like a plank. She only jumps back just in time to avoid him falling on her.

“What in the bloody hell—”

She has no answer. There’s no one else around but them, and anyone with sense would have done more than to just disarm him. But it isn’t. It can’t be.

It’s been a year. A whole year, and still her heart is beating faster, and she can feel Ron’s eyes on her as if imploring her to agree with what he’s surely thinking, too. To tell him _yes, it is,_ even though chances are no higher than they have been before.

“What do we do with him?” Ron asks eventually, nudging Lucius Malfoy with his foot.

“Tie him up,” she says. “I’m sure we can find some use for him.”

* * *

They don’t win the battle, simply because there’s no such thing as _winning_ here.

Rodolphus Lestrange dies a slow death despite the reinforcements that the Death Eaters send them, that would be more appreciated if it didn’t make his wife go feral. Just one more reason for her to hate them. Just one more reason for her to use her favourite curses—the Unforgivable ones—on them.

They don’t win the battle because one Death Eater is dead and the others flee, but not before Bellatrix Lestrange takes out Remus Lupin, and so they lose anyway.

They lose the safehouse, too, but that’s nothing. (That’s not true. It _is_ something, but not right now. They can find a new safehouse; they won’t ever find a new Remus.)

What they do have is Lucius Malfoy, which isn’t something that makes anyone very happy, but it’s something nonetheless. “He kept asking for you,” Ron tells Malfoy. “Care to elaborate?”

Malfoy, for his part, just looks like he’s seeing a pile of shit crawl up a wall. “Elaborate on what, Weasel?”

“Why was he looking for you?”

“I’m his _son_ ,” Malfoy spits. He doesn’t look happy about it. Still, it must be doing something to his head. “That mean I’m suspect to you again, does it?” His sneer is almost painful, but for once, Hermione can’t begrudge him this.

“I didn’t—”

“I don’t know why he’s here,” Malfoy says, looking his father straight in the eye, “and I don’t care to hear it.”

“Son…” Lucius croaks. It’s the first thing he’s said since he got back his ability to speak. “I’m sorry.”

Something shifts behind Malfoy’s—Draco’s—eyes, but she can’t quite tell what it is. It leaves her worried for only a moment. She’ll never admit that out loud, because it isn’t fair, but part of her still isn’t fully trusting of him even after all this time. He doesn’t deserve that.

“Sure,” Draco says. “So am I.” He shrugs. “Not for leaving you, mind.” His lips curl back—a snarl, a sneer, something sincere and unpleasant.

“Your mother is dead,” Lucius says, and perhaps that’s why he looks so broken, because he may be evil and an arsehole but he could still love his wife.

It’s like someone froze Draco Malfoy in time. He hadn’t been actively moving, but now he’s almost a statue, so still he might not even be breathing. Hermione doesn’t know how much love Lucius held for his wife, but it’s clear that Narcissa Malfoy was loved by her son, at least. “Alright,” he says after several heartbeats. “Well. Thanks for letting me know.” And with that he turns, as if to leave, with everyone staring at him.

“Draco,” Kingsley says softly, urging him to stop. “You know, if he won’t say anything else—”

“I know,” Draco says. For the first time today, his voice doesn’t sound like his own, clogged up with something that might be holding back tears. “I don’t care.”

Hermione can’t be the only one who wants to ask him if he’s sure, but he doesn’t give any of them the chance to open their mouth—not even his father. He’s out the room before anyone has fully processed the meaning of his words, and no one is dumb enough to follow him.

It’s only when she’s scanning the room to look at other people’s reactions that she realises Ron isn’t in there with them anymore.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’ve come too early.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was a little busy yesterday so I couldn't update, but here you go!

Twelve months, eight days, four hours.

How do you describe the feeling of seeing a friend again after a long time? How about when it’s a friend you’ve been thinking was dead for a year? How do you reconcile your love and relief with the anger that you feel when he suddenly turns up again? You can tell yourself that there must be a decent explanation for his absence, and there probably is, but knowing that and feeling that are two horribly different things.

You don’t do anything, because these conflicting feelings stop you from making any movement at all, and all that comes out of your mouth is: “ _What_ in Merlin’s bloody pants—”

“Uh, hey, Hermione.”

Do you hug him?

Do you slap him?

Do you do both?

Do you do nothing?

In the end, his reaction is what decides for her. The first step she takes toward him, he flinches back. Just a little; it’s barely perceptible, but it makes her falter a little, too. She’s his friend. He should react to her the way he would an enemy.

She stalks up to him, ignores Ron’s hand on his shoulder, and wraps him into a hug.

Still tells him, “Fuck you, you arse,” though.

He laughs, a little shaky, and brings his hands up around her, too. “I’m sorry.”

She holds him a little too long, as though afraid that he’ll just disappear again. When she finally does, there’s only one word she can think of to say. “Explain.”

* * *

Five months, twenty-four days, twenty-one hours.

“He’s coming,” he gasps. “Hermione, he’s coming.”

“Get out,” she says. “To the last place, _Now._ ” It’s cryptic, but he thinks he gets it—the last place they stayed at, because she can’t mention any location for fear of being followed.

And just like that, she’s gone, and he should be following—he should, but the pain in his head is keeping him from being able to Disapparate at all, and he’s too late, he _knows_ he’s too late—

The green light doesn’t come as a surprise.

It doesn’t hurt. Quite the opposite, in fact. One moment he’s sure his head is going to explode, and the next, he feels… rather good, actually. Naked, though—which makes sense once he realises that he _is_.

It’s not cold, so he isn’t too bothered until he hears a pitiful sound from the distance and suddenly wishes that he had some clothes to put on, so he’ll at least feel a little less vulnerable. He’s barely finished the thought when a heap of them appears right in front of him, and he dresses quickly before making his way in the direction of the sound.

He wishes he hadn’t. It’s a baby, but it isn’t—it’s ugly and bloody and naked, and more like Voldemort than a normal human baby.

“You can’t help it.”

The voice is familiar. “Professor Dumbledore?”

“Harry.” The man is walking up to him with a sad smile. “You’ve come too early.”

“You could say that,” Harry says.

“You misunderstand,” Dumbledore says. “Come walk with me.”

This isn’t real. Dumbledore is dead. So, for that matter, is Harry—he remembers the green light now. Is this death, then? It’s nothing like he imagined it would be, if there were something like an afterlife. It’s just a bright, white room with absolutely nothing in it except for himself and the old Headmaster, and the pitiful thing whimpering on the ground.

“That thing—Is that—?”

“A part of Voldemort? Yes, it is.” Dumbledore doesn’t look back, so neither does Harry. “Have you ever wondered why it was that you could talk to snakes, Harry? Or see though Voldemort’s eyes? Feel what he feels?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“That night when he tried to kill you, the curse rebounded. By that time, Voldemort had rendered his soul so unstable that it broke apart after those acts of evil he performed that night, those cold-blooded killings. And the part that broke away from him when the curse rebounded latched itself onto the only other living thing in the room. It latched itself to you.”

“And he didn’t realise that?”

“Goodness, no. I don’t think he could feel anything at all by that point, there was too little left of his soul. And he never found out, because he never sought to comprehend why the curse rebounded. He does not value things like house-elves and children’s tales. He does not value or understand love, loyalty or innocence. That they have a power beyond his own, beyond the reach of magic, is a truth he has never grasped.”

“So I was the final Horcrux.”

“You were the seventh,” Dumbledore says. “But he never intended to make it, or knew. If he had known, he wouldn’t have done something as, if I may call it so, monumentally _stupid_ as he did the night that he came back. Do you remember?”

Of course he remembers. “He took my blood.”

“He took your blood,” Dumbledore agrees. “He took into his body a tiny part of your mother’s sacrifice, and while that enchantment survives, so do you.”

“But I’m dead.”

“In a way, yes.”

“And we haven’t even come close to destroying all the other Horcruxes.”

“No.”

“So what happens now?”

“Well, that is entirely up to you. Where would you say we are?”

“I—King’s Cross, I suppose,” Harry says, because where before he’d thought they were in an entirely empty space, he now thinks he can see platforms and the high ceilings of the train station. Cleaner, though. Emptier, too.

“In that case,” the Headmaster says, “you could go back. Or you could board a train.”

“Board a—Where would that take me?”

“On,” Dumbledore says simply.

“And what happens if I decide to go back?”

“You will wake up,” Dumbledore says. “You will have to be prepared to get out of there immediately, of course. If I may be so kind, I would suggest Arabelle Figg’s house. She will know what to do.”

“Hermione will be worried.”

“She will.”

“Professor—what did you mean when you said I was too early?”

Dumbledore smiles sadly. “By now, you may have understood that there were certain… hopes of how this would play out.” He shakes his head. “I will have to beg for your forgiveness, when you fully understand.” Harry wants to interrupt him, but his old Headmaster holds up a hand. “You understand, now, that you had to die.”

Harry looks back to where the bloody baby lies.

“Indeed.” Dumbledore follows his gaze. “I’d wished for you to find out differently—beforehand, preferably. After all the Horcruxes were destroyed, you would have been told… everything. Most importantly, that you had to die, and that Voldemort had to be the one to do it.”

There’s a pit of dread in Harry’s stomach that is growing deeper by the second. “Who would have told me?”

Somehow, he expects the answer, even though it doesn’t make sense. “Professor Snape.”

“Snape killed you.”

“ _Professor_ Snape granted me peace.”

“Why would you keep making excuses—”

“Harry.” The old Headmaster sounds so old and tired in that one word that Harry shuts his mouth right away. “I could not let them defile the boy’s soul by having him kill me. Do you understand that?”

And just like that, Harry does understand. Dumbledore had known about Draco Malfoy’s task. He’d planned his death. And Snape had gotten the questionable honour to do it.

“I would tell you everything,” Dumbledore says, “but you know what you need to know, and I believe we have been loitering for long enough, don’t you?”

Harry would really rather be told everything than go back right now, but he has a feeling that his opinion on this doesn’t matter very much right now. He’ll have to go back or _board a train_ , and he knows he can’t just leave his friends. “I won’t be able to sense the Horcruxes any more than the others now, will I?”

“I’m afraid you will be just as ordinary as everybody else,” Dumbledore says.

“Well,” Harry says. “That’ll just have to do.”

“Good luck,” Dumbledore says. “Arabella Figg, Harry, if you don’t mind.”

And just like that, he’s gone, and Harry can’t do much more than swallow the myriad questions he still has on the back of his tongue and take a deep breath before closing his eyes.

The moment he can feel pain again is the exact moment he Disapparates, and it isn’t to Hermione’s suggested location. It’s to the smell of cats and old cake.

* * *

Twelve months, eight days, five hours.

There are too many questions to ask right away. It’s too difficult to figure out what to ask first; too much new information to try and sort in her head. So it’s Ron who finally asks the most straightforward question, and perhaps the most pressing one: “Who’s Arabella Figg?”

“She, uh… She’s the Squib who lives in Little Whinging,” Harry says, looking slightly awkward. “The Dursleys would send me to her house whenever they went on holiday or something and I wasn’t allowed to come.”

“And, what, she knew how to heal you?”

“It’s been _months_ , Harry,” Hermione says, and even to her own ears it sounds exasperated. “What happened?”

“I did stay there a while,” he admits, scratching the back of his head. “I passed out the moment I got there. It took some time to get my head around missing a part of what I thought was _me_.” The way he says it suggests he doesn’t mean that he had to sit and talk about it. “It took some time to get back on my feet.”

“You were out cold for months?” Ron asks, almost sceptical.

Harry looks a little sheepish, which is more telling than anything he’s said so far. “Not _months_ , maybe… Listen, guys, I didn’t know where to find you. The only places I knew of aren’t being used. I didn’t know how to tell you I was alive.”

“We knew, mate,” Ron says, fishing the Deluminator out of his pocket. Hermione’s sure he’s never let go of it since they heard Harry’s voice come out of it. She wonders if he’s heard more, if he’s been waiting for something to happen like a broken radio. “We uh… heard you say our names, months ago.”

“Ah.”

“So then what?”

He’s fumbling with a chain around his neck, a chain that looks suspiciously like the one the locket was on. Is he still wearing that around his neck? After everything?

He is, but it’s no longer a vibrant, gleaming green. It’s blackened as if burnt. “I can’t hear them anymore,” Harry says, “but I’m pretty sure there’s nothing left to hear in this one, anyway.”

“But we had no _way_ —”

“That’s another long story,” Harry says, smiling ruefully, “and people are probably worried…”

“That’s never stopped us before,” Ron says. Hermione just nods. “Explain.”

“Do you guys remember when I got the Sword of Gryffindor out of the Sorting Hat in our second year?” …


End file.
